Absolutely, and let me tout my less-radical-than-it-seems suggestion of what to do about SCOTUS: sortition.
Only the role of the chief justice is constitutionally enshrined. Write a Judiciary Act prescribing that the other seats get filled by a yearly random draw from the courts of appeals.
i mentioned this before but the last week or two has fully clarified that the rest of our lives is a drag-out fight against the supreme court that starts with priming the public to enthusiastically support — or at the very least resist decorum-based media calls against — completely rebuilding it
Make it impossible, in other words, for axe-grinding litigants to know who would hear their union-busting/Black-voter suppressing case du jour — or for the Harlan Crows of the world to know where to send their bribes.
I'm intrigued by this idea (and definitely agree with the need to think out-of-the-box), but I'm still stuck on two questions: first, what precedent is there for legislating the current justices out of their seats w/o abolishing the Court (which Congress can do for lower courts, but not SCOTUS); /1
and second, can the Art 3 req of "one Supreme Court" be satisfied without assigned judges? Congress can't create 1 SCt for the east and 1 for the west (that's not "one"), and probably couldn't specify that every case would be heard by a different random panel of 3 CJs. Is this distinguishable? /x
(There's certainly precedent for courts without judgeships in the lower courts - historically, the original circuit courts and in modern times, FISA. But would the Supreme Court say the Supreme Court is different?)
