[saraid216]

> OTOH, I don't really know what would be better. Smaller "committees", more like expert groups, can give better results if the right people are selected. Which is unlikely, given the present state of governments. At the moment it seems as if the best strategy is oversizing and over-bureaucratizing to slow down the process and limit the amount of damage done in that way. Meh. :-/

Most utopian schemes end up being conditioned on a lot of very difficult, if not outright impossible, presumptions. I am not claiming that the current system is perfect; it can, without reservation, be improved significantly. The question is how, why that how, and at what cost.

It's worth pointing out, btw, that the SCOTUS is a committee. Congressional committees are weak because their members are elected and, at least superficially, represent real people in a direct manner; their job is to be biased, and this bias makes them vulnerable to non-committee actions like lobbying and popularity contests. That is why you don't get to elect the SCOTUS: precisely to protect them from that weakness. (And also why you don't get to elect any other Presidential appointee; most of them also end up on committees.)