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by hnbad 1453 days ago
You can't vote them out. There are only two ways to get rid of a Supreme Court judge: they retire or they die.

As I assume you aren't asking for ways to bring about either of those scenarios in ways that would incur legal issues, the more appropriate answer is that the government can appoint additional judges, which I think is called "packing". Right now the general consensus among Democrats seems to be that they don't want to do it because it would set a precedent Republicans could exploit, although history has shown that the Republicans don't require precedents to "play dirty" (e.g. while Obama refused to appoint a replacement judge because he was on his way out of his second term, Republicans happily appointed replacement judges when Trump was on his way out, not to mention that a significant number of Republicans supported the claim that Biden "stole the election" and Trump was the real winner).

If you're asking for a systemic long-term solution: no, it can't be fixed. The problem is that the Supreme Court lacks a clear mission statement and effectively acts to reinforce whichever party is in power at the time. The current SCOTUS majority leading to these decisions are "constitutional originalists". While you can argue that this is bad (or that this is still relying on interpretation and inferrences), it's impossible to say that this is wrong because it's an entirely valid interpretation of what the SCOTUS is for.

If you want to "fix" the SCOTUS because it's undemocratic, the problem is that it's only one of many aspects of the structure of US government that's undemocratic. The system was never meant to allow all people to equally influence the government. The system exists as much to curtail the power of the ruling politicians as to curtail the direct power of the people.

In other words SCOTUS isn't broken, you just don't like the political system itself. That's fine, but it requires a different framing in order to understand your goals and options.

1 comments

> There are only two ways to get rid of a Supreme Court judge: they retire or they die.

They can be impeached by congress.

That would require them to have commited impeachable offenses. That bar seems to be extremely high considering the kind of conduct that doesn't seem to meet it.
Apparently the wife of one of them was instrumental in attempting to overthrow our Republic. Is that not an impeachable offense? How is fucking treason not impeachable? I feel like I am losing my mind here, people.
Do you consider yourself liable for transgressions committed by your spouse?
Well, if we go back to 2000, said justice refused to recuse himself from ruling on the presidential election despite his wife being on the winning candidate's presidential campaign and transitional administration.

Seems a fair reason for the house to conduct an investigation to decide whether to send the matter to the senate for trial. Note none of that actually depends on Gore having won the vote, BTW.

I'd also like to know more about said justice's wife's role in the last election and if she involved her husband in any way to prepare for yet another Supreme Court intervention.

> considering the kind of conduct that doesn't seem to meet it.

What are you talking about? I'm just pointing out that retirement and death are not the sole means of leaving the bench.