A quick thought on the Supreme Court situation

[catsittingstill]

Women are slightly over half the population.  So women should be slightly over half the Supreme Court.  There are nine Supreme Court judges, so that means five of them should be women.

The most we've ever had is two.  George W. Bush left us with only one.  Of course the next Supreme Court judge should be a woman.  The next four Supreme Court judges should be women.  Unless Ruth Bader Ginsberg retires in that time, in which case the next five Supreme Court judges should be women.

Duh.

And I'm being moderate and patient, here.  If I was really going for true equality and fairness, the Supreme Court should have only women on it for the next one hundred and ninety years, at which point a single male would be allowed to serve and twelve years later, a second male would be allowed to serve, with the court only opening up to allow a total of four males sixteen years after that.

Comments

[mindstalk.livejournal.com]

Just a law, like randwolf said. FDR threatened to do it when the SC was calling Social Security uunconstitutional, "court packing" is the term. I think there was political outrage, but the Court backed down. Not an expert, though.

And yeah, the precedent of further packing could lead to bad things. Still, fun to make them blanch.

There's already one woman on the court. +1 to replace Souter, +6 more in packing, = 8:7 women:men. 15's enough to get 'parity', and also the current minimum; one could use that fact as a justification and attempted rationale for a one-time Court increase, to head off it being used again.