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My thinking on the SCOTUS began from the question of what is the best number of justices? Eventually that line of thinking landed at the realization that unlike the other branches of government i cannot give a basis in representative democracy or law for any set number. I agree with your point that we have too few for both capacity and diversity reasons. However I can’t come up with a justification for setting it at any specific number. What we should do is have more, probably many more, and appoint new ones more often so that we are regularly updating the views and experiences of the judicial body as you also discussed. The way to do this would be to legislate a schedule of regular appointments without regard to the total number of justices. new appointments every two years when we get a new senate class. I don’t see a reason we couldn’t or shouldn’t have hundreds of justices. I really don’t see how we justify having so few.

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Today’s NY Times has an article about a study that shows that the likelihood of getting a clerkship with a Supreme Court justice increases sharply for people who were undergraduates at Harvard, Yale, or Princeton. Here’s a link: https://www.nytimes.com/2023/02/06/us/supreme-court-ivy-league-harvard-yale.html?smid=nytcore-ios-share&referringSource=articleShare

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