Clearly, the role that the Supreme Court has acquired, or rather usurped, must be changed.
I’m very interested in your thoughts. To me, the big problem is that Congress actually LIKES offloading controversial decisions to the Court, so Members and Senators can get re-elected denouncing whatever Court decision without ever having to take responsibility for fixing it.
If a case is appealed from the circuit court, one panel of the justices (say, five of them) hears the case and decides whether or not the Supreme Court will accept the case. If it does, then the case gets assigned to a group of nine justices selected from the "bench" using the following parameters:
1. Judges will be assigned more or less at random, with a few exceptions listed below.
2. Judges can have their assignments altered for personal reasons, conflicts of interest in a specific case, or to balance their workloads.
3. Any of the judges who heard the initial appeal for a case as I described it above cannot be included among the nine who decide on it.
I think this process would go a long way towards reducing the politicization of the Supreme Court, and would diminish the value and power of a lifetime appointment to the court. It would also add some interesting elements to cases, since we won't have to go years at a time with the same nine people -- some of them very old and in fading health -- rendering decisions of such paramount importance to the nation.