We support our Publishers and Content Creators. You can view this story on their website by CLICKING HERE.

The Tennessee trans tangle is before the U.S. Supreme Court, where Justice Sonia Sotomayor compared irreversible transition surgery to taking an aspirin. Scott proclaimed Sotomayor “an idiot,” and it’s hard to blame him. This woman once proclaimed herself a “wise Latina,” which is revealing. Ancestry in the Iberian peninsula of Europe may generate pride, but it qualifies no person for a seat on the Supreme Court, and this is not to single out Sonia.

Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson has trouble defining a woman, so as Scott also notes, “thus does the left’s evolving orthodoxy make idiots of them all.” Yet there they are, on the Supreme Court for life, finding emanations in the penumbras and so forth. California, with all its faults, may chart a path to reform.

The Golden State’s supreme court justices serve a term of 12 years. The governor fills vacancies by appointment and “at the next general election, voters decide whether the appointees should be confirmed to fill their predecessors’ unexpired terms and whether justices whose terms will expire should be elected to new full terms.” Consider Gov. Jerry Brown’s choice for chief justice.

Rose Bird had been the first female public defender in Santa Clara County before serving as campaign chauffeur for Jerry Brown during his run for governor in 1974. In 1977 Bird was only 40 years old and without judicial experience but Brown tapped her for chief justice. In 10 years as chief justice, Bird heard 64 capital cases and never voted to uphold a death sentence. For staunch death-penalty opponents, including those on the court, it defied belief to think that every case was unfounded.

The cases included Theodore Frank, duly convicted of kidnaping, torturing, raping, murdering and mutilating two-year-old Amy Sue Seitz in 1978. For Californians, the real issue for was not the death penalty but a chief justice who holds herself above the law.

On November 4, 1986, California voters booted Bird by a margin of 67 to 33 percent. It was the first time voters had ousted a chief justice, and the people did not stop there. They also tossed justices Cruz Reynoso and Joseph Grodin, both Jerry Brown appointees, who sided with Bird on the death-penalty cases. On the other hand, justice Stanley Mosk remained on the court because, as he explained, “I took an oath to support the law as it is and not as I might prefer it to be.”

Assigning justices of the U.S. Supreme Court a fixed term and giving the people a say in reconfirmation are reforms worth considering. When justices can’t define a woman, can’t recognize mutilation, or find emanations in penumbras, the people could show them the door. Judges who uphold the Constitution, respect the rights of the people, and support the law as it is, could be retained. That would prevent the high court from serving as a robed politburo, and give power to the people.

In the style of John Lennon, imagine if the idiot Sotomayor had been on the November 5 ballot. That should render some idea of how a supreme court of the people would work.