• He means absent a Constitutional amendment. And he’s correct.

    Congress authority is limited to saying what type of cases the court can take and how many justices there are.

    Constitution says they are lifetime appointments. Can’t really attach rules to that. Even if they break the rules, they are still lifetime appointments.

    Only way out is death, retirement, or impeachment. I think only one justice was ever impeached.

    • @[email protected]
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      121 year ago

      Maybe I’m wrong but I thought the only thing the constitution says about it is “there shall be a supreme court.”

      Regardless, the constitution was created to be amended, and it’s the states that vote on those. You know. That whole democracy thing.

      • @thepianistfroggollum
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        21 year ago

        Yeah, but at this point trying to amend the constitution is a dangerous prospect when we have a very large group trying to push the country into a fascist theocracy.

        Not to mention that getting enough states to agree on anything is impossible now.

        You could try to put in one that bans the government from raping puppies to death and the GOP would oppose it.

    • @[email protected]
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      1 year ago

      Congress can impeach Alito and remove him from the bench. So, yes, they have some major muscle to flex. Unfortunately, the GOP is so corrupt, they wouldn’t impeach Alito for for shooting a random stranger on 5th ave and having sex with their corpse., in broad daylight, on live TV.

      • Uhhh, no? Courts and officers of the court are bound, top to bottom. Someone that ignores orders may be held in contempt. Courts can issue writs of capias to any proper officer and writs of mandamus to lower courts.

            • @[email protected]
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              11 year ago

              But they won’t. They’ll do what they want but in such a way to appear to be ‘trying’, they’ll go back to court because people will see they didn’t meet the requirement, it’ll take a year or two to get back to Supreme Court, get another ruling, wash-rinse-repeat.

              When a system can be trivially ‘gamed’ to avoid the rules, then the rules are useless.

    • @[email protected]
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      11 year ago

      I believe the proposals being floated right now are for instituting term limits by having justices retire to Senior Justice status after a set number of years. They’d still be technically appointed and able to sit in on cases in special circumstances, but not on normal duty.

    • @[email protected]
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      11 year ago

      I guess we could just just pass a law that any supreme court justice that sits on the bench after attaining the age of 80 will be summarily executed in celebration of their achievements.

      Then when the alw is challenged to the court, the textualists can’t argue that it’s cruel and unusual punishment because it is infact a celebration.