Idea: Elect Supreme Court Justices

[Bush did 311]

Supreme Court should be nonpartisan. I would remove Presidential appointments since this is putting too much on that critical office. Instead I think this branch should almost be totally separate from others with lower courts promoting members to higher ones.

However, I think there should be an option to call a ballot initiative for people to fire members of the court if they overstep. This wouldn't be a routine thing, just a resource to inject some accountability in an otherwise politically isolated body.

[Skill and Chance]

This makes me nervous because I strongly suspect Earl Warren et al. would have lost a removal/retention referendum sometime from Brown v. Board to Loving v. Virginia.

[SInNYC]

Supreme Court should be nonpartisan. I would remove Presidential appointments since this is putting too much on that critical office. Instead I think this branch should almost be totally separate from others with lower courts promoting members to higher ones.

However, I think there should be an option to call a ballot initiative for people to fire members of the court if they overstep. This wouldn't be a routine thing, just a resource to inject some accountability in an otherwise politically isolated body.

Do you mean having federal court judges elect who is the most qualified among themselves? That might make sense. I guess it would be kind of like the papal selection process.

[MarkD]

I doubt doing this would lead to the Court being any more objective. The reason the federal judiciary is kept isolated from political pressure is so they will have the capacity to be objective -- which, unfortunately, isn't happening. What can we do to make sure the Justices will be objective? I think electing them will make things worse, not better.