Just going to copy/paste what I put in the Sonia Sotomayor post earlier today: > The whole point of being a lifetime appointment is so that external parties ca

Just going to copy/paste what I put in the Sonia Sotomayor post earlier today: > The whole point of being a lifetime appointment is so that external parties cannot exert pressure on the justices. The system sacrifices a lot of other checks and balances because it puts "lack of external pressure" on a pedestal far far above most other things. When the justices put themselves in positions where ruling one way or another could make the difference between earning $3M to $100M or $0, it's a complete travesty for the court and the nation. It means we get all the worst parts of lifetime appointments and we still don't even get the primary benefit of it. --------------------- Edit: Absolutely fascinating that this got flagged to death after reaching the front page. I'm glad someone vouched for it, ProPublica has generally proven to be a good, high-quality source for news that matters. It's unlikely that stories from ProPublica deserve to be flagged. On an earlier submission about the Supreme Court, dang said: > HN has been running a no-politics-for-a-week 'experiment'. Although it hasn't been a week, I think we've learned as much from it as we're going to, so it can be over now. Among what we learned is that it's impossible to define 'politics' with any consensus because that question is itself highly political, and that HN is at its best when it can meander through all the (intellectually) interesting things, some of which inevitably have political dimensions. Given that the Supreme Court rules on all technological issues [0][1][2][3][4][5][6][7][8][9], there's an argument to be made that external influence on the Supreme Court can guide YC founders to better predict where Clarence Thomas and Sonia Sotomayor's decisions might land on edge-case issues, based on how those cases affect their benefactors, and allow founders to make more accurate bets on the future. There's also an argument to be made that this is rage-bait and will bring down the quality of discourse on HN. I'm sympathetic to that. 0: Supreme Court Rules Police Need Warrant to Track Your Cellphone https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17374440 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17374440 1: Supreme Court allows blind people to sue retailers if websites aren't accessible https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21188092 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21188092 2: Supreme court: Warrantless cell phone searches illegal https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7944024 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7944024 3: Google’s Supreme Court faceoff with Oracle was a disaster for Google https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24719878 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24719878 4: States Can Require Internet Tax Collection, Supreme Court Rules https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17365366 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17365366 5: Supreme Court to Hear Google-Oracle Copyright Fight https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21549826 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21549826 6: Computer Scientists Ask Supreme Court to Rule APIs Can’t Be Copyrighted https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8576936 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8576936 7: Supreme Court rules antitrust lawsuit against Apple can proceed https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19899373 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19899373 8: US Supreme Court Restricts Scope of Computer Fraud and Abuse Act [pdf] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27382752 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27382752 9: Uber drivers are workers not self employed, Supreme Court rules https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26191364 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26191364