A final few comments from readers:

I believe that Justice Scalia, in his 60 minutes interview, made light of the fact that he is still working despite the fact that he’d be paid the same amount if he retired. So perhaps the solution would be to triple (at least) their pay upon retirement, and then have it only apply to justices confirmed between 1992 and 2001

Paying judges not to decide cases — kind of like paying farmers not to plant!

Your readers had good suggestions. For what it is worth, here is mine: an amendment to the Constitution that allows for the nullification of any Supreme Court decision within a year of its publication, if there is a 2/3 vote in each house of Congress that is also approved by the President, or if 3/4 of the state legislatures so vote.

Simpler than the above would be this:

Mark: I would like to see a requirement that invalidating a law ought to require more than a 5-4 decision. If they can’t get at least 6 justices to agree, that’s pretty good evidence that the law isn’t a clear cut violation of the Constitution, and they ought not be overturning laws on such a slim margin.

Of course, a membership total of nine justices is not set in the Constitution, though maybe our philosopher-kings on the Court could find it in an emanation or a penumbra somewhere. Another reader suggested keeping lifetime tenure in theory, but subjecting judges to retention elections — i.e., after each 10 years on the bench, they have to be re-elected somehow (I guess by Congress).

The main point of all this is that there needs to be more debate among conservatives about institutional reform of the judiciary, so as to change the game. Contrary to the claim of another reader, who warns that “one should tread more carefully when addressing contemporary problems than to call for an upheaval of the foundation the Framers set forth in Article III”, the courts long ago caused just such an upheaval, and we need to address it systemically if we are to restore any semblance of constutitional governance.