How I would reform the Supreme Court

The Babylon Bee — the paper of record — had the perfect satire for the idea of increasing the Supreme Court to 13 justices: Losing Baseball Team Suggests New Rules Allowing Them To Add 4 Players To The Field.

But just because the recent proposal is somewhat ridiculous doesn’t change the fact that some reforms might be wise.

ISTM there are two main problems with the court.

The first is that the court has been filling a legislative vacuum. The solution for that has little to do with the court. Congress needs to step up. Not that I want this Congress to do anything but resign, but in general terms, Congress needs to stop pushing off their legislative duty on the courts and the federal agencies.

The second problem is the obvious one — that the nomination of a new Supreme Court justice is such a partisan drama. For that one, I think the solution is to expand the court to dilute the impact of any given nomination. But not from 9 to 13. That’s peanuts. It needs to be a much bigger number.

There’s currently about 179 judges on the federal bench. Why not just have them rotate in and out on the Supreme Court? That would severely reduce the significance of any individual nomination.