“the court affirmed the judgment of a lower court to dismiss the lawsuit”
They upheld the judgment from the lower court. Should they instead preside over their own case? That hardly seems like a better choice than upholding the lower court’s judgement.
They could have provided enough SC justices to have a quorom but not provided any input into the quorom. Essentially, be present and go along with whatever the other justices decide.
There’s nothing in the Constitution about how many justices there has to be. I would argue that if the Supreme Court can’t get quorum we need to nominate Justices until they get it.
There does appear to be some law on the books stipulating the rules around a quorum and such a law is considered valid unless struck down by said court, I suppose.
The Supreme Court of the United States shall consist of a Chief Justice of the United States and eight associate justices, any six of whom shall constitute a quorum.
Same way the court technically is not limited in headcout by the constitution, either. In that case, it’s set by congress.
“the court affirmed the judgment of a lower court to dismiss the lawsuit”
They upheld the judgment from the lower court. Should they instead preside over their own case? That hardly seems like a better choice than upholding the lower court’s judgement.
They could have provided enough SC justices to have a quorom but not provided any input into the quorom. Essentially, be present and go along with whatever the other justices decide.
There’s nothing in the Constitution about how many justices there has to be. I would argue that if the Supreme Court can’t get quorum we need to nominate Justices until they get it.
There does appear to be some law on the books stipulating the rules around a quorum and such a law is considered valid unless struck down by said court, I suppose.
https://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/28/1
Same way the court technically is not limited in headcout by the constitution, either. In that case, it’s set by congress.
This statute and earlier versions were upheld by the Supreme Court. Congress may change the size of the court and set its non-original jurisdiction.
Just my opinion, but that sounds janky af.
Because it’s vastly different if the four to maintain quorum were Alito, Gorsuch, Kavanaugh, and Barrett versus Roberts, Gorsuch, Thomas, and Barrett.
Basically you can stack justices to fit an outcome and that’s kind of what we don’t want.
They got the outcome they wanted though.