Remember that the 12th circuit is the District of Columbia.
Map from www.uscourts.gov/…
There’s funny website by SCOTUS [ www.supremecourt.gov/… ] that suggests that Justices have code of conduct, but I doubt many here believe that they follow this newly minted code. PDF of the “Code” here: www.supremecourt.gov/…
The front page of the SCOTUS site indicates that they believe they are bound by little.
The Justices must exercise considerable discretion in deciding which cases to hear, since approximately 5,000-7,000 civil and criminal cases are filed in the Supreme Court each year from the various state and federal courts. The Supreme Court also has "original jurisdiction" in a very small number of cases arising out of disputes between States or between a State and the Federal Government.
When the Supreme Court rules on a constitutional issue, that judgment is virtually final; its decisions can be altered only by the rarely used procedure of constitutional amendment or by a new ruling of the Court. However, when the Court interprets a statute, new legislative action can be taken.
Hmmmmm. I think we can do better. Let’s explore some options under discussion.
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One of the ideas in the Washington Monthly article by Rob Wolfe Jan 16, 2024
A rotating SCOTUS lottery among 179 qualified federal judges—
[Try to judge shop that Federalist Society]
How to Fix the Supreme Court
The time has come to connect popular anger over the conservative supermajority with concrete ideas for reform.
The Supreme Court needs to be thought of as a neutral arbiter for political disputes, not just another player in them, the law professors argued—and so fixing it today is a question of restoring that aura of public trust. Right away, that goal disqualified the most talked-about idea at the time: court packing. Supporters of court packing like the political scientist Aaron Belkin argue that the Supreme Court has already been stacked with highly ideological conservatives who gained their seats through norm-breaking political brinksmanship, and so to add, say, six liberal or moderate justices would actually be to unpack it. But as Epps and Sitaraman pointed out, that reasoning would mean little to Republicans, who would have every incentive to repack the Court as soon as they regained power. (Belkin, for one, finds that argument unconvincing. “The first thing is that the Court has already been stolen. If your wallet is stolen, you don’t forgo efforts to recover it just because it might be stolen again,” he told The Atlantic in 2020.)
To fix the Court in a durable way, the two scholars imagined a total rework meant to make partisan capture almost impossible. The first step was to expand it even more. Epps and Sitaraman proposed appointing every circuit court judge—all 179 of them—an associate justice of the Supreme Court, which would hear cases on a rotating panel system. Every two weeks, nine justices would be picked by lottery from the larger pool. A few more tweaks would ensure impartial rulings: No more than five judges on a panel could be appointed by a president of the same party, and to rule federal law unconstitutional would require a 6–3 supermajority. Each change was meant to counteract a structural weakness that makes the Court vulnerable to political machinations. Partisans in Congress, for instance, would have less incentive to game the appointment process if each seat mattered less, and the larger pool of judges would reduce the unpredictability of death and strategic retirement.
Along with that framework, which Epps and Sitaraman call the “Supreme Court Lottery,” they offered an alternative: the “Balanced Bench.” In this variation, five permanent justices from each party select another five temporary justices, who must be chosen either unanimously or by a supermajority. Those temporary judges serve a year on the Court, and are chosen two years in advance (so that no conniving parties can strike deals with to-be-appointed justices on specific upcoming cases). If the Court doesn’t fill those seats, it doesn’t convene. Like the other plan, the Balanced Bench is designed to thwart partisan takeover; in this case, by incentivizing consensus. Permanent justices would be forced to choose the most moderate and broadly acceptable temporary justices; and Congress would be encouraged to appoint more plausible centrists to the lower federal judiciary, since ideologues would have little chance of reaching the high court. washingtonmonthly.com/...
AND/OR
From a NYTimes opinion by Jamelle Bouie on Oct. 14, 2022
Require a supermajority of SCOTUS to overturn major precedents or make judgements on constitutionality—
This Is How to Put the Supreme Court in Its Place
If Congress can regulate the appellate jurisdiction of the Supreme Court, then it can determine which cases it can hear, the criteria for choosing those cases and even the basis on which the court can make a constitutional determination.
Congress could say, for instance, that the court needs more than a bare majority to overturn a federal statute. Even if you agree that the court has the mostly exclusive right to interpret the Constitution, it doesn’t therefore follow that five justices can essentially nullify the constitutional views of the legislators who passed a law, the president who signed it and the four other justices who affirmed it. Constitutional meaning, in other words, flows as much from the elected branches (and the people themselves) as it does from courts and legal elites.
In the same way that it takes a supermajority of Congress to propose a constitutional amendment, it should probably take a supermajority of the court to say what the Constitution means, especially when it relates to acts and actions of elected officials. If there is any place for mandatory consensus in our government, it should be in an area where any given decision can have broad and far-reaching consequences for the entire constitutional order. www.nytimes.com/...
AND/OR
This excellent summary is from Demand Justice and covers 4 common proposals
expanding SCOTUS to match the # of circuits & creating orderly transitions
- ADDING four more seats: To restore balance to a Court captured by right-wing partisan interests, we must add four new justices. There’s already a bill in Congress to do this – The Judiciary Act – and support is growing as the Supreme Court shows us time and again it must be reformed. Congress has changed the number of justices on the Court seven times in American history, and it’s time to do so again.
- TERM LIMITS at predictable intervals: Supreme Court confirmations have gotten too political. Instead of having justices serve for life and politically time their retirements, we should create term limits that ensure justices serve a uniform number of years. Term limits would give each president the opportunity to appoint the same number of Supreme Court justices each term, reducing partisan gamesmanship around each confirmation and making the Court more democratically representative.
- ENFORCEABLE code of ethics: The Supreme Court is the least accountable part of the federal government, with no binding code of ethics. Faced with multiple ethics crises and plummeting trust from the American public, the Court has made clear it is unable or unwilling to police itself. Congress should institute a binding code of ethics so that Americans can trust the justices are ruling based on the law, not politics and personal interest.
- INCREASING the number of lower court judges: While the Supreme Court is the most high-profile part of the judicial branch, the vast majority of cases in the United States are heard at the district and circuit court levels. Here too, our courts are in desperate need of reform. Right now, we have too few judges and too many cases, which means Americans are waiting too long for their cases to be heard. Dramatically expanding the number of circuit and district court judgeships will make the judiciary more efficient and more effective, and it will present an opportunity to increase diversity in the judiciary. demandjustice.org/… (bolding mine)
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My personal recommendation for change is to never again 7 members of one religion on SCOTUS.
I suggest no more than 2 justices of any one faith. Diversity of religious beliefs like diversity of backgrounds and personal experience lead to wiser decision-making in business, in education, and in local governments.
Couldn’t hurt SCOTUS in particular, and the US Judiciary in general.