News Americas, NEW YORK, NY, Fri. Sept. 25, 2020: And so does TIME in this new episode …
The QUESTIONS I will tackle this week are ….
1) Why were there only 3 singers on the Supremes musical group, and why only 9 Supremes – mostly men on the U.S. Supreme Court?
2) How long is too long?
I might call this episode about the Supreme Court, aka The Supremes, a tutorial on this timely subject – but it does not matter.
What matters is … DRILLING down on every subject as I do here in Trump’s America.
Let’s get started with the basics. Where in the U.S. Constitution is there reference to the Supreme Court and what does it say?
Article III, Section I states: “The judicial Power of the United States, shall be vested in one supreme Court, and in such inferior Courts as the Congress may from time to time ordain and establish.”
That is all Dear Readers. Everything else is made up by Congress.
NOW THINK about this – if the Founders wanted to be more specific, they would have been. Amendment III could state there will always be 9 Supreme Court Justices, but it does not. Article III could state Supreme Court Judges must be appointed for life, but it does not.
So the very, very interesting result for those of you who subscribe to “original intent” or others, the Constitution is a core document meant to evolve over time. You must come to the same conclusion thatthere is nothing SACRED about either Judges serving for life or that there must be 9 Supreme Court Justices.
All those who favor the Status Quo are ONLY arguing they like it the way it is and so they do not want to make any changes. A rather dull argument.
QUESTION: Is the United States the same country today as it was in 1789?
The answer is a resounding NO; and in this context, the Constitution and its Amendments do establish various universal truths that will not change over time, and as much, others that can and should change over time.
Clearly the Supreme Court falls within the second category of change. The certainty is there must be a Supreme Court, and it is the Court of last resort. Of course there must be a Supreme Court, and here is the SHOCKER ..
NOT because the Court by divine providence will always make the best or even good decisions, but rather simply there must be in any government, a final binding resolution to conflicts that involve the law, or the alternative is chaos.
So, DROP the nonsense that Supreme Court Justices are Special Judicial Wizards who always make the RIGHT decision, because there is no such thing as the always correct decision.
Does anyone believe otherwise?
What Court decisions are, and specifically Supreme Court decisions are, is what a majority of the judges believe is the correct decision in matters of conflict. Further, of course there are many, many issues that reach the Supreme Court that Founders alive in 1789 could not conceivably have any idea would exist in the 21st century. That if they could have by some magic known, the original U.S. Constitution would have been a very, very different document.
Some very basic Truths that do NOT change over time would still be there, but many other provisions would be very different, and others would have been included that are nowhere to be found specifically in the Constitution.
The Supreme Court is a perfect very imperfect example for the 21st century, and long before this century. IF the Founders had been able to gaze into our time back in 1789, what they had no clue about would have become crystal clear to them – the very partisan nature of ALL Supreme Court appointments.
When writing the Constitution there was no idea about, let alone very different political parties existing, that would control the nature of the government. Yes, there was tremendous disagreements among individual Founders, but without political parties, their views and the decisions of U.S. Senators about nominees to the Supreme Court was based on their view of the integrity and quality in their view of the nominee, not their position on very specific issues.
So, if they knew what we know, I think they would have limited how long a Federal Judge could serve on the Supreme Court, so each Judge’s biases and their appointment by the vote of just 51 Senators, would NOT allow individual Judges to make these decisions for many decades after their appointment.
That in fact, the idea of not limiting service on the Supreme Court of these Judges, they would be above partisan politics by being allowed to serve even for life would make them more independent of pressure is ridiculous.
That is why TODAY, one TEN-year term makes all the sense for Supreme Court Judges and why Congress should assert its right to do so without question.
How about the other equally all-important issue, the size of the Supreme Court?
The Founders wrote nothing in the Constitution as to how many Judges must be on the Supreme Court. NOT doing so is just as significant, as if they had set the number. By not setting the number, they CLEARLY state there was no specific number that was required and just as important there is no reason the number of Supreme Court Judges cannot or should not change over time.
There were just 6 Supreme Court Justices originally, so for those of you who subscribe to the nonsense that we must adhere to the Constitution EXACTLY as interpreted in 1789, you should be clamoring for a return to 6 Justices!
Of course, that is ridiculous and why I took the time to expose it here even more – that 6 is an EVEN number and tie decisions would be “normal.”
SO, LET’S GET REAL here. How many Supreme Court Judges should there be today and why?
WARNING …. you may not want to read further since I will SHOCK some of you.
I would recommend 25 yes – TWENTY-FIVE Supreme Court Judges based on the very good logic …
1) There were 13 states in 1789 and 50 now. Back in 1789 there were few dozen Federal Judges appointed at all levels. Today there are 870.
2) Our far, far more diverse nation today also should be in the name of fairness must have diversity represented on the ultimate court the Supreme Court. 25 Justices on the Supreme Court will ensure many women on the Court, many different states and all the regions of the nation represented, and a wide selection of Native, Black, Latino, Asian and other Americans too.
Why would a 25-member Supreme Court ensure these results? Because with such a large Court, Presidents will be pressured and so will the Senate to have a very DIVERSE Supreme Court and that DIVERSITY inherently will lessen the CORRUPTION of the ideology driven Supreme Court we have now.
COMBINE this 25-member Supreme Court with a TEN year term LIMIT and we will have a very new and far better Supreme Court and one I strongly believe the Founders would want if they could have seen the 21st century.
Finally, why were there only 3 singers on the Supremes? Because there were.
READERS … I rest my case!
(This series dedicated in honor of the late Liu Xiaobo & Jamal Khashoggi)
