Can US Supreme Court justices / judges be &quot;rotated&quot; out against their will? In last night's US Presidential Debate, candidate and US Senator Bernie Sanders asserted the option of being able to "rotate" Supreme Court judges / justices to other courts. As quoted in The Hill: "I do not believe in packing the court," Sanders said during the second of the first two 2020 Democratic presidential debates. "We’ve got a terrible 5-4 majority conservative court right now. But I do believe constitutionally we have the power to rotate judges to other courts and that brings in new blood into the Supreme Court and a majority I hope that will understand that a woman has a right to control her own body and that corporations cannot run the United States of America." For background, Article III, Section 1 of the US constitution is in full: The judicial power of the United States, shall be vested in one Supreme Court, and in such inferior courts as the Congress may from time to time ordain and establish. The judges, both of the supreme and inferior courts, shall hold their offices during good behaviour, and shall, at stated times, receive for their services, a compensation, which shall not be diminished during their continuance in office. Article II, Section 2, states in part: [The President,] by and with the advice and consent of the Senate, shall appoint ... judges of the Supreme Court, and all other officers of the United States, whose appointments are not herein otherwise provided for... Is Sanders' claim (in bold above) correct? Does the US President, or anyone else for that matter (other than a Supreme Court justice choosing to retire from their position on the Supreme Court) have the power to "rotate" those judges to other courts? Consistent with Sanders' claim, this question is asked under the current US constitution assuming no amendments; just about anything is possible via amendment. Also, while a bunch of folks on Law.SE might be able to speculate or find persuasive arguments posted in answers below, who would be able to authoritatively decide the constitutionality of such a question, with all Supreme Court justices having clear conflict of interest on the matter? A couple law professors posts proposals here (and in more detail here, reviewed here), one for a rotating panel of appeals court judges to serve on the Supreme Court, and another for a 15-justice Court with 5 appointed by each party and 5 picked unanimously by those 10, without the ability to hear cases if those seats are empty. There is also a proposal circulating for 18-year term limits followed by remainder-of-lifetime service on a circuit court. If any of those, or other strategies, appear constitutional at present, an explanation of why would be a great answer, as would be an explanation of why any proposal involving rotation consistent with Sanders's quote would not be possible under the current constitution unamended. Note: The question framing intentionally excludes consideration of any person or military force who might have the physical firepower to remove Supreme Court justices in a way that would leave them unable to serve as a judge in another federal court. That's not "rotating" off.
I will only address this part of the question: Who would be able to authoritatively decide the constitutionality of such a question, with all Supreme Court justices having clear conflict of interest on the matter? The Supreme Court could still hear such a case, as the justices make their own decisions about when to recuse themselves. In particular, they might decide to hear the case based on the "Rule of Necessity", which says roughly that a biased judge is better than none at all: a judge can hear a case, even in the presence of a conflict of interest, if there is no other way for it to be heard. See United States v. Will, 449 U.S. 200 (1980), in which the Supreme Court ruled 8-0 that federal courts could try a case related to the salaries of federal judges. Another possibility is that the case could be brought in a lower federal court, say District Court. There is a question here: the Supreme Court has original jurisdiction in "all Cases affecting Ambassadors, other public Ministers and Consuls" (US Constitution, Article III, Section 2), and I do not know whether Supreme Court justices are "public Ministers". However, if a lower court did have jurisdiction, it could rule on the constitutionality of the question, since a District Court judge would not have a significant conflict of interest. The relevant Circuit Court of Appeals could presumably hear an appeal. If the Circuit Court's ruling was appealed to the Supreme Court, and the Supreme Court felt that they all had conflicts of interest (and decided not to invoke the Rule of Necessity), then they could simply not vote to grant certiorari, in which case the Circuit Court's ruling would stand.
Unless you are an ambassador or one of the US states, SCOTUS doesn't have original jurisdiction over your lawsuit, so they can't hear it either. If you've named all the judges of all the courts that do have jurisdiction, then one of them will handle it anyway, under the doctrine of necessity noted before. For cases that do fall within the Supreme Court's original jurisdiction, a jury trial is theoretically possible, but it appears it has not occurred since the 1790s, and only one has surviving records: Georgia v. Brailsford in 1794. See &quot;Special Juries in the Supreme Court&quot; by Lochlan F. Shelfer, Yale Law Journal 123:1, 2013-2014. Otherwise, non-jury original jurisdiction cases are usually delegated to a special master, a sort of &quot;contract judge&quot; who hears all the evidence and recommends a judgment that the full court typically rubber-stamps.
First, while most US court systems do have rules against frivolous lawsuits, most judges are loathed to employ them because the punishment is that the vexatious litigant would be denied the use of courts for when they do actually have a case of merit. Declaring someone a vexatious litigant also does not 100% block someone from filing suits. Normally they can file if a judge or officer of the court (i.e. a lawyer) signs off on the case. Since most lawyers won't touch the kind of cases that vexatious litigants tend to file, the litigant tends to be representing themselves pro se (Lawyers taking these types of cases tend to get disbarred quite quickly as they are effectively taking money from clients who they ought to know don't have a snowball's chance in hell... with global warming in full effect... in an El Nino year). Furthermore, being declared a vexatious litigant in one state does not ban you from filing in another state and most election cases at the time of writing have yet to reach the Federal Level (and even then, such a declaration is not a nationwide ban. It only bans the litigant in federal courts. All 50 states have to separately ban the litigant in their own legal system). Secondly, while there are a number of cases over the past election that were dismissed, only a handful were filed by Trump's legal team. Many were filed by down-ballot Republicans or even voting citizens in many cases who's desired outcome just happens to align with Trump's desired outcomes. While most have been dismissed, it's wrong to say they were filed by Trump or his legal team. The right to litigate election results is quite broad as to who has the standing to file these cases and it varies from state to state. Finally, not all cases dismissed are dismissed &quot;with prejudice&quot; which means that while the case in it's current state is not acceptable for a court to hear, it's not without merit to be heard once the deficiencies are amended. As an example, one early case filed and dismissed was seeking an injunction to stop the vote-counting until the court could rule on the matter of how well ballot observers could actually &quot;observe&quot; the ballots being counted. However, between the time the case was filed and the judge heard the case, the ballots were all counted, which meant that the relief sought by the plaintiff (i.e. Trump) was physically impossible to grant BUT the legal question of whether ballot observers were allowed to properly observe the counting is still valid, so it was dismissed &quot;Without Prejudice&quot; which means the plaintiff could amend the case and refile as the relief needed to be changed. Essentially the judge is willing to at least hear the arguments but cannot grant the relief for damages sought. In the U.S., Judges cannot hear cases that are moot, even if there is a valid argument to be made (to give a criminal angle to this, yes, a judge should hear the evidence that a man committed mass murder... but only if that accused mass murderer is still alive to be punished... if he's dead there's really nothing the Judge can do.).
I know of no specific provision of the Constitution that would forbid it. I know of no court case in which it has been found unconstitutional. There's no "irony" clause in the Constitution. Taxation without representation may have been a grievance, but there's no inherent reason why the framers would have had to forbid it. US citizens do still have the "freedom to expatriate" (and avoid taxation) if they renounce their citizenship. There are already other examples of "taxation without representation" in US law (e.g. District of Columbia), which also have not been found unconstitutional in court, as far as I know. In many cases, expatriates can still vote for federal offices, including Congress (e.g. in a state where they used to live, or where a parent used to live). See https://www.fvap.gov/citizen-voter/registration-ballots. The Sixteenth Amendment gives Congress the power to "lay and collect taxes" with few limitations. There is certainly no explicit exception for expatriates. As far as I can tell, it would be constitutional if Congress were to impose an income tax on everybody in the world, regardless of residency or citizenship; it would just be hard to enforce.
Yes Ideally a case will be conducted by the same judge throughout, however, there are a multitude of personal, professional and administrative reasons why this might not happen - litigation can take years and like every other workplace people come and go, have changing family circumstances, sickness, vacations etc. A litigant should not be alarmed and trust that the new judge has got themselves up to speed. For most people, litigation is a rare and confusing experience, for judges it’s just another day at the office.
The core principle of stare decisis is that the law should not depend on what judge you got; two cases with the same facts should have the same outcome. In the common-law tradition, there weren't really written statutes; there was only "what's been done in the past," and so the only reference you'd have to what the law should be in some situation is past court decisions. If judges didn't have some constraints to rule similarly to before, there really wouldn't be any legal standards (because there was no written law to go back to; in civil-law countries, there always has been a written law, so precedent isn't so important). Stare decisis doesn't actually directly stop a judge from entering a decision that goes against binding precedent. However, judges are expected to obey precedent, and for the most part do what they're supposed to do. If they don't, the case will likely be reversed on appeal. Binding precedent only applies within the area a court serves; a court doesn't have to listen to precedent from a different court that has nothing to do with the case. The rule is that precedent from any court up the appeals chain is binding; federal district courts are bound by their circuit court and SCOTUS, state courts are bound by higher state courts and SCOTUS (but not other federal courts, as the case can't be appealed to them). A court can sometimes overrule its own precedent, but the cases where it can do that are rare (and so applying a higher court's precedent can also be viewed as "if you appeal to them they'll say X, so we're saying X.")
The question should not include France and Germany, and should be limited to common law jurisdictions that are similar to India, because the function of judges differs starkly between adversarial vs. inquisitorial systems. The adversarial model pits two parties against each other, with the judge serving as the decider (of law, and perhaps of fact). The parties can offer witnesses, who can be compelled to respond to questions, and the attorney asking the question gets to control the question asked (subject to a possible objection by the other party, to be ruled on by the judge). The judge can rule on requests (which are not questions) i.e. petitions by either party. Otherwise, the judge sits there more or less mute, soaking up the argumentation being presented. Appellate proceedings are somewhat special in that the justices may address questions to the attorney, in order to better understand the logic of the proffered argument. The burden is on the attorney to make the case. There is no direct burden on the justice to &quot;make a case&quot;. The &quot;court of public opinion&quot; may be relevant in a jurisdiction where the justice is an elected office or is appointed for limited time. Or, the contrary opinion of a higher court may have some influence on a justice's rulings – this is not the case with a Supreme Court. In other words, it would be highly dysfunctional within the adversarial system for a party to be allowed to interrogate a judge. Formal petitions are allowed, as long as you follow proper form.
SCOTUS blog regularly does posts on that kind of topic (see, e.g., their Stat Pack) and if you looked at their sources or the authors of those posts, you could probably easily find more. There are people who do that and make their findings publicly available, but I don't know them off hand.