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Yep, the Supreme Court really is just a House of Lords—a purely political branch with bizarre veto power, wielded capriciously and without accountability. Time for massive reform.

To expand: The UK's reactionary House of Lords once had a powerful veto that it would use to block liberal legislation from the House of Commons—including a gov't budget in 1909. So the Liberals threatened to pack it—with *500* more members. The Lords backed down & let their veto to be weakened.

Add another 9 seats, split the court into two divisions by seniority, and jurisdiction for all meaningful cases goes to the most junior division. Nobody loses their life tenure, but they can’t do any more damage.

The german high court system is split into multiple courts (6 of them). The court for constitutional stuff has 16 judges split up into two chambers sitting for terms of 12 years with mandatory retirement at 68. The final court of appeals for civil and criminal cases has 153 judges and 19 divisions.

My version is - 18 year limit as voting judge, after that you still get to hang out, have clerks, hear cases, etc. you just can’t vote on a case.

Split the baby. You can vote on original jurisdiction cases (maybe even replace the special masters!) but not appeals

The HoL that you’re referring to hasn’t ever been a court. It’s an archaic second house of parliament with relatively limited powers. There was an unconnected, HoL of 12 apolitical judges - the UK’s final court of appeal. It was renamed the UK Supreme Court in 2009 - partly to avoid the confusion

I didn't say it was a court.

Sorry - wasn’t trying to be argumentative - but the roles of the two HoL were/are often (understandably) confused.