SENATE STANDING COMMITTEE: Gov't Oversight and Reform (Recommendations)

[LastVoter]

The court is fine as it is.

[LastVoter]

Why are there multiple bills trying to pack the court?

[LastVoter]

Why are there multiple bills trying to pack the court?

Because the time has come to expand the Court.  Three Justices is simply too few; all a Justice needs to do is to persuade one other person of the correctness of his idea in order to win.

So your solution is to pack the court?

[LastVoter]

So your solution is to pack the court?

My solution is to expand the number of Justices.  It is narrow-minded to say that the Court can never be expanded.

And it's not narrow minded to expand the court because you don't agree with it's rulings? Do you realize what kind of precedent that sets? If you want court reform you could try to increase the participation of 3 justices by making it more like real supreme court in function, and making potential impeachment procedures more fact based/rather than partisan minded court packing. We should include the oral arguments and make it imperative that judges participate in asking questions, and also make it necessary to have opinion drafts with every verdict.

[LastVoter]

I also concur with mandated opinion drafts if such is possible. I inquired about legal ways to address this matter with the Chief Justice and haven't recieved a response. Since the Justices have been invited to testify here I would like it if they may also opine on this matter as well.

Sorry, I think I must have missed that.  One idea could be re-confirmation hearings if a member of the Court fails to attach their name to an opinion twice without explanation, as unlike re-confirmations relating to fixed term lengths it would have less of a political aspect, and would likely be an effective method of requiring participation from every member of the Court.

This proposal becomes significantly less feasible if we are to expand the size of the Court, however, working under the assumption that people will be less inclined to participate if one of the other, say, four Justices can do their questioning and/or discussion for them.  I remain convinced that the reason for stagnation in the Court's activity is a simple lack of lawsuits in the last several years rather than any inherent flaws within the judicial system.

Admittedly, a new addition of justices wouldn't create any new court cases (feel free to dispute that, Yankee and Ben, if either of you think otherwise); however, as previously stated, the inclusion of more people on the bench would encourage better participation and create more diverse opinions when cases do, in fact, come up.  I simply don't understand how one justice would be inclined to do all the work for the remaining justices, especially if we go forward with something like your idea to reconfirm members of the Court.

Inclusion of more justices is pure politicization of the court as opebo has stated, especially when it gets like 2 cases a year. I would consider adding a bill that increases the duties of the court to include a questioning period similar to the one of supreme court of the US, and also having obligatory opinions written when ruling on a case.