you have a bizarre reverance for court justices, who are like 25% downgrades according to the stats
Not sure which stats you mean, but I do believe that everyone has an instinct for self-preservation.
The stats about them being downgrades
You're one of my favorite persons whom I've never met. I would never pretend to know more about underwriting than you. But I know more about this than you do. I happen to actually know quite a bit about what I'm saying, about the people I'm saying it about, and about how they think. I have met them, their protégées, and their protégées' protégées. I have litigated cases in that oh-so-prestigious Court (record: 2-0; once as a Good Guy, once as a Bad Guy). This is my bailiwick, my passion, and, sometimes, my practice.
And yes, Alito and Thomas suck. Don't know enough about Barrett to form an opinion yet. Sotomayor and Kagan have, of necessity, been made to kinda suck, too. But there is an invisible thread holding it all together, which is a shared understanding that they are the only Branch of government enough removed from politics to actually act as a bulwark against seismic shifts initiated by the two political Branches of government. Why? Because their power is tenuous, not defined in the Constitution, and it only exists in earnest so long as they avoid straying too far into the political realm of things. As I've written elsewhere, there is a discernible pattern of the Supreme Court waiting at least 20-30 years after the point in time in which the political Branches should have acted before making the decision that the politicians could not make for one reason or another, most often a counter-majoritarian dilemma.
The threat of "court packing" is real and well understood. Ask anybody. Article III of the Constitution does not fix the number of Justices. It reads more like an afterthought, speaking of "cases and controversies". What power exists was wrested by cunning, guile, and expediency during the early and middle 19th Century. The Judiciary Act is subject to repeal or amendment at the whim of the party in power. In short, the power of the Supreme Court depends, inexorably, on their perception as an impartial, apolitical body among those who create the laws. That is the truth, the way, and the word of me and people way smarter and more accomplished than me who have come to similar conclusions.
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