lucounu,
I am sure you never bothered to read my proposed amendment before criticizing it, so I will help you:
http://supreme-court-gender-equality-pac.blogspot.com/XXVIII Amendment to the U.S. Constitution: Supreme Court Gender Equality
Gender equality shall be guaranteed on the Supreme Court and on the Court of Appeals according to the following:
1. The Congress shall determine an odd number of Justices no fewer than nine who shall together compose the Supreme Court. The total number of Justices shall include one Chief Justice of the United States and the remaining even number of Associate Justices of the Supreme Court of the United States, of whom all shall be citizens of the United States.
Of the total number of Associate Justices, half shall be male by legal designation and half shall be female by legal designation.
When vacancies occur, the President shall nominate Justices to the Supreme Court who are then appointed by and with the Advice and Consent of the Senate. The Chief Justice shall be appointed for nine years, and shall not be reappointed Chief Justice thereafter. Associate Justices shall be appointed to hold their offices during good behavior. Successive Chief Justices shall alternate between male and female without exception.
The President shall nominate the Chief Justice according to gender from among the Associate Justices, except no person shall be eligible for nomination who would be more than 69 years old at the time of appointment. If no Associate Justice is qualified by age to be appointed the Chief Justice, the President shall appoint any other qualified person.
If an Associate Justice is nominated to be the Chief Justice by the President but fails to be appointed by the Senate, that Associate Justice shall retain the position of Associate Justice. If an Associate Justice becomes the Chief Justice, that Justice shall retire from the Supreme Court when the nine-year appointment as Chief Justice expires.
2. All Court of Appeals en banc courts shall be composed of an even number of Circuit Judges, of whom half shall be male by legal designation and half shall be female by legal designation. Only if the Circuit Chief Judge presides shall an entire en banc court be composed of an odd number of Judges.
3. Upon ratification, the amendment shall be enacted straightforwardly in due time.
All new Associate Justices shall be female until an equal number of male and female Associate Justices are seated on the Supreme Court. Thereafter, all Associate Justice seats will be identified as being either male or female, and will be filled as the need arises according to strict gender distinction without exception.
The current Chief Justice shall complete a nine-year term from the date he was sworn in as Chief Justice, and shall then immediately retire from the Supreme Court and shall be replaced by the first female Chief Justice of the United States. If the current Chief Justice leaves his position for any reason before his term expires, his appointed successor shall be female.
On a district basis, all Court of Appeals appointments shall be female until gender equality is achieved among active Circuit Judges. Thereafter, new appointments shall be made in a manner that maintains gender equality among all active Judges.
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The key sentence regarding your concern is this one: "Of the total number of Associate Justices, half shall be male by legal designation and half shall be female by legal designation."
Transgendered people and homosexuals are not excluded in any way.
lucounu, if you are unable to find one woman whom you would deem to be qualified to be a U.S. Supreme Court justice, then you are a misogynist. I could easily find ten qualified women in less than one week � probably in less than 48 hours � probably in a long afternoon. And every one of those ten women I would find would be at least as qualified as any ten men you might be able to find.
The best woman out there at the last opportunity was U.S. Senator Dianne Feinstein, and she was not even selected. Consider:
http://steven-a-sylwester.blogspot.com/2009/10/dianne-feinstein-should-be-next-us.htmlExcerpt:
Dianne Feinstein is 76 years old, so her career as a justice would probably last less than ten years. Feinstein was born in San Francisco, California, and graduated from Stanford University in 1955 with a Bachelor of Arts degree in History. In the late 1950s, she worked in the San Francisco District Attorney�s office. She first entered politics in 1961 when she worked to end housing discrimination in San Francisco.
Feinstein was first elected to public office in 1969 when she began her nine-year tenure on the San Francisco Board of Supervisors. She was President of the San Francisco Board of Supervisors when San Francisco Mayor George Moscone and Supervisor Harvey Milk were assassinated on November 27, 1978, so by law she succeeded to the mayoralty on December 4. 1978. She was elected mayor of San Francisco in her own right in 1979 and was reelected in 1983, serving until January 8, 1988. In 1987, City and State magazine named Feinstein the nation�s �Most Effective Mayor.�
In 1990, Feinstein made an unsuccessful bid for Governor of California, losing in the general election to then U.S. Senator Pete Wilson. On November 3, 1992, she won a California special election to fill the U.S. Senate seat vacated in 1991 by Pete Wilson. She then won reelection to the U.S. Senate in 1994, 2000, and 2006.
Throughout her almost seventeen years as a U.S. senator, Feinstein has continuously served on four U.S. Senate committees: Rules, Judiciary, Appropriations, and Intelligence. During the 110th Congress (2007�2009), she was chairwoman of the Senate Committee on Rules and Administration. During the current 111th Congress (2009�2011), she is chairwoman of the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence. Additionally, she is chairwoman of the Subcommittee on Interior and Related Agencies of the Senate Committee on Appropriations, and is chairwoman of the Senate�s International Narcotics Control Caucus.
In her service on the Senate Committee on the Judiciary, Feinstein currently serves on five different subcommittees: 1) Administration Oversight and the Courts; 2) Constitution; 3) Crime and Drugs; 4) Immigration, Border Security and Citizenship; and 5) Terrorism, Technology and Homeland Security.
Though U.S. Senator Dianne Feinstein has not earned a law degree from an accredited law school, she is certainly more knowledgeable and more steeped in the law than almost anyone else in the United States, including law school professors, practicing attorneys, and sitting judges � even perhaps including some sitting U.S. Supreme Court justices! Though her education in the law was not �formal,� it was no less complete than if it had been formal; in fact, her law education was both firsthand and thorough, and it was ingrained through and through like only front-lines political battles can � and do � ingrain things.
While other U.S. Supreme Court justices would consider and ponder the law before making a ruling in a case, Feinstein as a justice would relate to and experience the law instead � and there is a HUGE difference in those distinctions. While the other justices have an inherited ownership of the law that is mostly academic and intellectual, Feinstein would bring to the Court something new: a battlefield-scarred sensibility that would sometimes rightly claim �I helped build it� ownership, which is an ownership that knows exactly what is buried inside the constructs of the agreed upon language that was signed into law.
The language of the law can be messy, especially if it is what remains after contentious political battling and is the stuff of uneasy and unwanted compromise. As is, the U.S. Supreme Court sits distant and removed from the legislative fray, and consequently functions out of a mixture of deep learning and active imagination instead of firsthand knowledge. The U.S. Constitution allows for the Court to be �distant and removed;� such a thing is not forbidden, but neither is it required. It is the folly of our times that we have failed to cross-pollinate the Court with influences from outside of our nation�s judicial system, even though the law fully allows that cross-pollination to occur.
The United States has three branches of government in its Constitution that together in their interplay make and define the whole: The Legislative Branch, The Executive Branch, and The Judicial Branch. Fifteen of the 44 men who have served as president of the United States also served as a U.S. senator. At the same time, only six of the 111 men and women who have served as justices of the U.S. Supreme Court also served as a U.S. senator � again, the last serving justice of the six was Hugo L. Black, who left the U.S. Senate more than 71 years ago in 1937. What an enormous waste of talent!
During her career in politics, Dianne Feinstein has spent more than nine years as a government executive being mayor of San Francisco and more than sixteen years as a legislator being a U.S. senator. No one currently sitting on the U.S. Supreme Court comes even remotely close to that level of experience; in fact, no one currently sitting on the U.S. Supreme Court has ever served outside of the judicial branch of our government. Though Feinstein is a consummate team player, it is easy to imagine that she might give new definition to the term �upbraid� someday along the way if she were made a justice on the Court, especially in her dealings with Chief Justice Roberts and Associate Justice Alito. Certainly, Feinstein would be a quick study, and would also be a fierce and clever opponent in the forging of a majority.
Does Feinstein have faults? Yes, absolutely! Does Feinstein have political enemies? Yes, absolutely! Has Feinstein made mistakes along the way? Yes, absolutely! All of those �Yes� answers are the inevitable consequence of a long and successful political career in both local and national politics. In a December 2007 SurveyUSA News Poll in California, 51% approved of the job Diane Feinstein was doing as a U.S. senator while 39% disapproved. A 51% vote wins political elections, and Feinstein knows how to win political elections.
If all politics is local, then final considerations are things personal. Dianne Feinstein�s only child is San Francisco Superior Court Judge Katherine Feinstein. Dianne Feinstein is the daughter of a surgeon, and is the widow of a neurosurgeon, who was her second husband. She divorced her first husband, who was an attorney who later became a judge. Her current husband is a wealthy international businessman. But the deeper truth is this: Feinstein�s ethnic heritage is Jewish, though her maternal grandparents were of the Russian Orthodox faith after converting from Judaism to Christianity. Feinstein attended the Convent of the Sacred Heart High School and received a Catholic religious education while also going to Hebrew school and synagogue while growing up in San Francisco. Her stated religion is Judaism. On a U.S Supreme Court that currently has six Roman Catholics serving as justices, throwing Dianne Feinstein into the mix could create quite a show.
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lucounu, there is not one man on the whole planet who is more qualified than Dianne Feinstein is to be a U.S. Supreme Court justice, and Feinstein is not even a lawyer. I do not agree with Feinstein on several issues that are very important to me, but I would stand up and cheer her nomination to the U.S. Supreme Court if it ever happened.
Steven A. Sylwester
