My Idea for electing Supreme Court justices

[True Federalist (진정한 연방 주의자)]

Anyone who believes judicial elections, be they by the legislature or by the people would cure the ills bedeviling the court need only look to the States to see the folly of that belief.  That said, there is no constitutional requirement that SCOTUS have a fixed sized.  Having the the President nominate a new justice at the start of each Congress and not bother with nominating "replacements" when they die or retire would be a way to prevent the lame duck nomination fiasco we now face and it wouldn't require a Constitutional amendment.

[True Federalist (진정한 연방 주의자)]

Anyone who believes judicial elections, be they by the legislature or by the people would cure the ills bedeviling the court need only look to the States to see the folly of that belief.  That said, there is no constitutional requirement that SCOTUS have a fixed sized.  Having the the President nominate a new justice at the start of each Congress and not bother with nominating "replacements" when they die or retire would be a way to prevent the lame duck nomination fiasco we now face and it wouldn't require a Constitutional amendment.

But Congress changes every two years, that's two Justices per term.

Why not just one justice at the beginning of the presidency, with no replacements and no re-election appointments?

Because the Court needs to be larger, not smaller than it is today. Just to keep on average nine justices at one per term would require an average term of 36 years and only one Justice so far has made it that long on the Court. Ideally, there would be thirteen, one per court of appeals.

[True Federalist (진정한 연방 주의자)]

Anyone who believes judicial elections, be they by the legislature or by the people would cure the ills bedeviling the court need only look to the States to see the folly of that belief.  That said, there is no constitutional requirement that SCOTUS have a fixed sized.  Having the the President nominate a new justice at the start of each Congress and not bother with nominating "replacements" when they die or retire would be a way to prevent the lame duck nomination fiasco we now face and it wouldn't require a Constitutional amendment.

But Congress changes every two years, that's two Justices per term.

Why not just one justice at the beginning of the presidency, with no replacements and no re-election appointments?

Because the Court needs to be larger, not smaller than it is today. Just to keep on average nine justices at one per term would require an average term of 36 years and only one Justice so far has made it that long on the Court. Ideally, there would be thirteen, one per court of appeals.

I do agree that the ideal SCOTUS size is larger than 9 justices, but I feel like any attempt to change that would really be opening Pandora's box.  Especially after the level of acrimony over Scalia's seat right now, any attempt to add seats, even in a politically evenhanded way (1 seat now, 1 more seat 4 years from now, and so on) would quickly lead to SCOTUS = House of Lords whenever one party gets full control federally.  And I'd rather not end up with e.g. the President striking down state and local laws by executive order and a stacked SCOTUS saying "whatever."

I don't think the enmity between Congress and the President has risen to the level it was during Andrew Johnson's presidency when Congress shrank the size of the Court so as to deny him the chance to nominate Justices.  Besides, politically a scheme such as I proposed could probably be enacted at the start of a second presidential term, to take effect at the beginning of the next presidential term.