Did it occur to you that the low pay afforded to judges, on the federal and state levels, may just have contributed to that? The pay is so low that it is difficult to get top quality conservative judges into the judiciary. Instead, the kind of person who is demented enough to take a 75% or more pay cut to become a federal judge is generally power hungry -- just the kind of person who screws up the judiciary. Pay them more and you'll get better nominees and better results.
Are you a NEA member? That's the line they keep pushing and it doesn't work there either. On the other hand, if we could return to the US Constitution as written it would be worth billions a year.
The question isn't money, it's who is nominating and approving the judges. Until that is fixed no amount of money will improve the situation in the least.
I don't think it's either / or. I think we need a President who will nominate qualified conservative judges. We need a Senate who will approve them. But in addition, we also need a larger pool of qualified conservatives who aren't power hungry megalomaniacs.
At the current pay structure, we just aren't attracting them. In fact, if you followed the courts closely you'd see that one of the consistent problems is that many apparent "conservatives" who want to be appointed to the federal bench are closeted megalomaniacs (see: Souter, David).
The best early sign of judicial megalomania? How about a willingness to take a 90% pay cut to go work for the Federal Government? There's nothing wrong with judges motivated by money, and I'd rather get a bunch of them than a bunch of power hungry zealots.
And no, I'm not an NEA member.