Can a supreme court decision be overturned, due to fraud?

Factual Questions
1

Please forgive my ignorance in the legal underpinnings of my own country, but it’s late, I’m tired, stressed out, and I’m curious. I could use a pick me up.

Anyway, the setup is: the US Supreme Court issues a 6-3 ruling in a pretty major case (damned if I know what…uh, the constitutionality of enslaving gay robots. I don’t know).

The day after the ruling, a video is released by CNN showing the six justice majority receiving a bribe to swing their decision, paid in two bags overflowing with money, and a pile of cocaine. Which the chief justice test-snorts off of the corpse of the dead hooker in the room—then absent-mindedly rubs his runny nose, and happens to rest his hand right over the hidden camera, leaving a bloody thumbprint on the lens. CNN also has the camera.

So…legally, what happens next?

2

I don’t think there’s any precedent for this, and I am not a lawyer (just a nerdy college student) so I’m totally guessing. But I doubt the decision would be immediately nullified, because I don’t think the law provides for such a thing. Instead, the justices, who only hold their offices “in good behavior” (see Article 3, Section 1 of the United States Constitution), would be impeached (which I believe has never happened before), unseated, and replaced by the normal mechanism of presidential appointment and Senate confirmation. The case would then probably be submitted to the Court again*, and, knowing the shady circumstances of the last decision, the justices would vote to hear the case, reconsider it on its merits, and render a new decision.

*This is where it gets complicated. Once a particular case has been decided by the Supreme Court, there are no more appeals for that case, so I believe that it wouldn’t be the exact same case again. Probably, some public interest lawyers would find someone else with the exact same legal issue and bring that case before the Court, so that the new justices could consider the same content without reopening a closed case. I am happy to be contradicted on this point, though, because I’m not positive that the Court isn’t allowed to re-hear an already-decided case.

3

Congress could pass a law that states:

If the Supreme Court ever has a ruling involving their being paid in two bags overflowing with money, and a pile of cocaine, which the chief justice test-snorts off of the corpse of the dead hooker in the room—then absent-mindlessly rubs his runny nose, and happens to rest his hand right over the hidden camera, leaving a bloody thumbprint on the lens…

All those responsible will be replaced and the said ruling will be reheard.

4

Congress can’t control another branch of the federal government. The Supremes would either ignore that law or rule it unconstitutional. The control Congress has over the Supreme Court is over the purse strings, and via impeachment.

5

Under what authority does Congress have the power to unilaterally replace justices on the Supreme Court?

6

They don’t - they can impeach the Justices, but that’s as far as it goes. Well, they can also refuse to replace justices - the Constitution only requires a Chief Justice of the United States, so we could get by with a Supreme Court of one. Or the Senate and President could pack the court, as FDR threatened to do - load up enough new Justices to outvote the old, corrupt ones.

As to what would happen to the decision in this case - the Supreme Court prefers to defer to its earlier rulings, under a doctrine called stare decisis (“let it stand”) - but it isn’t required to do so. If the issue came before the court again, the Supremes could assess it anew.

Actually, come to think of it - it is possible to petition for a re-hearing before the Supreme Court. It’s very rarely granted, but it might happen in this case, once the old justices had beeen replaced.

7

It has happened once, in 1804, but Justice Chase was not removed.

8

The Supreme Court has never granted a motion for rehearing of a case on which it has already ruled, as far as I can tell - only for cases on which it didn’t rule or declined to hear at all.

Assuming SCOTUS didn’t have original jurisdiction over the hypothetical gay robot case (ie., it was appealed to SCOTUS from lower courts), once it issued its ruling it would remand the case back to the lower court for final dispensation (“the robots are allowed to fuck, so issue a new ruling in this specific case in line with that provision”). Appeals courts don’t enter final orders, they just decide if the trial court got it right, and make them do it over if they didn’t.

The lower court presumably would decline to follow SCOTUS’ instructions, citing the bags-of-money issue, and declare a mistrial, or simply re-enter its own order.

Then the side which bought off SCOTUS would probably appeal again, on the grounds that the trial court failed to follow SCOTUS’ appelate order, and the newly-constituted SCOTUS would rehear the case.

I believe it’s also possible that the party which lost in front of SCOTUS could file a new suit against the winning party, but I’m not sure about that part.

If SCOTUS had original jurisdiction (ie., the case went straight there rather than getting appealed to the top) I have no idea what recourse the screwed party would have.

9

Well, yeah, that’s my point. They can impeach justices and the president can appoint new ones with Senate approval, but Congress has no power to just fire and replace any federal judge.

Note that changing the maximum number of justices requires amending the statute – so you’d have to get both houses to agree to increase the size of the court, then start appointing cronies with Senate approval.

10

If it were a criminal case and the ruling went against the defendant, the defendant could probably file a new habeas corpus petition.

Note, however, that just because the majority was bribed does not necessarily mean that its ruling was wrong. A new set of justices on the court could re-examine the matter and independently determine that the law requires the same result.

11

I’m not even a real lawyer, let alone a Constitutional scholar, but here’s my take:

First of all, if the corrupt Justices have enough allies and support then this becomes a constitutional crisis and/or civil war, at which point the answer is laws, schmaws, who’s got the guns? So we’re assuming that the bribers blew their entire budget on the Justices, and pretty much everybody else is now trying to reverse this clear perversion of justice.

I see a couple possibilities: One is that the losing party asks for a rehearing, requesting all the bribed Justices to recuse themselves from the rehearing. This requires some measure of shame and remorse by the bribees, but is the quickest solution.

In any event, I’m pretty sure it’s a federal crime for a sitting federal judge to accept a bribe, so whichever US Attorney has Washington D.C. in his jurisdiction could send the bribees off to Sing-Sing.

At which point, there will have to be some kind of decision as to whether a federal judge can be removed for being bribed and/or imprisoned. In the absence of any specific existing statute or procedure, it would probably end up being the SCOTUS that decides, which brings up the point of to whether the bribees would participate in that decision. Likely, the unbribed Justices would just say “We’re the only ones who matter, and we vote to throw these corrupt bastards off the court; just ignore whatever they say about their votes.” And everyone would say “Well, maybe some law professor might say that’s not a 1,000% kosher ruling, but we’re all going to go along with it.” and the US Marshalls would drag the bribees out of the building and into a cell.

And then finally, Congress does have the power to make laws about how the federal judiciary works, so they can (and quite possibly have already) pass a law saying, essentially, “Federal Judges are no longer considered to be “in good behavior” if any of these criteria are met (one of which is being convicted of a felony involving their office), and will be removed from office following this procedure…” The procedure would probably need to involve decisions by other judges, rather than say the President, but would probably include a clause disallowing any judge from ruling on his/her own removal, so we’d get to the point above, where the remaining Justices kick the bribees off the court.

12

Gay robot uprising. Bloody as hell, but surprisingly well color-coordinated.

13

So they claim. But we all know they’re just afraid to take on the gay robot special interests.

14

There’s no need for any of that. They can all be impeached for whatever reason Congress wants. That’s how this would be decided. Any criminal charges could be handled later.

That procedure is impeachment and it’s the only Constitutional way to remove the judges.

15

*“I have received $1,200 from the plaintiff asking for a judgment in his favor. I have received $1,000 from the defendant asking for a judgment in HIS favor. Here’s what we’re going to do. I will return $200 to the plaintiff, and we’re going to try this case on its merits!”
*

16

I don’t care who you are, that’s funny right there! :smiley:

17

One of the most startling scenes in Heinlein’s The Moon Is a Harsh Mistress is when a group of teens ask the protagonist, Manny, to “go judge”. The custom as set up in the story (for sound reasons) was that there were no permanent judges paid from taxes, but that citizens whose judgment was respected would hear cases and render judgment on them. Both parties to a case had to agree to the choice of judge, at which point they put up equal sums, in open court, to recompense him for his time and attention. As Heinlein was wont to do in building alternative societies in which hsi stories happened, it makes sense within the story context — and asks the question, “Why not require the litigants to pay, in equal amounts, for the privilege of having their case heard and judged impartially on its merits?”

18

This is on target and was what I intended to say as I opened the thread. I’d add, “…or use the threat of impeachment and subsequent criminal trial to force a resignation”, which is becoming an increasingly more common way to remove egregious offenders from office.

As someone once said, “Just as Britain’s highest court is the House of Lords [no longer true, but it was at the time], there is one court in America higher than the Supreme Court. It’s the Senate sitting as the Court for the Trial of Impeachments.” And it is unusual but not exactly rare to see a District Court judge removed by impechment, or resign under the threat of impeachment. See the list in the article here. The impeachment of U.S. District Court judge Thomas Porteous of Louisiana is pending trial right now.

Impeachment is the appropriate way to handle such cases, IMO, because it is sufficiently complex and time-consuming a process that serious efforts (as opposed to bloviation) to impeach require a mass of hard evidence; it cannot be used to remove someone for his political views (or at least is likely not to be so used), but it is implementable, and handled by elected officials answerable to the public at a near-future election, whenever the situation impels people to feel it needful.

19

Impeachment, at least at the Federal level, can be used to remove someone for any reason whatsoever. It could be over his race, his/her gender, sexual orientation, number of syllables in their last name, type of eyeglass frame they wear and etc.

The “check” on rampant impeachment is that a lot of elected officials at the highest level have to agree for it to work, and the public (at least up until this point in history) has never shown that it would tolerate rampant impeachment as a means of the legislature removing everyone who they just didn’t care for from positions of power.

In the immediate term, if Congress wished to nullify the effects of a SCOTUS decision that was clearly corrupt then they could just pass legislation to that effect.

For many situations that the SCOTUS handles, this would work fine. For example say the SCOTUS has ruled that a law establishing a Federal agency to regulate mole hunting is unconstitutional, all congress has to do is pass essentially an identical law to the one the SCOTUS struck down.

This is where some people might say, “Congress can’t pass a law that is clearly unconstitutional!” Well, as a matter of fact they can, generally speaking any law passed by Congress is the law of the land until that specific legislation is deemed unconstitutional or some later law supercedes it.

So right after the corrupt SCOTUS deemed that the Federal Agency of Mole Hunting was unconstitutional, Congress just passes identical legislation (it would obviously have different Congressional bill numbering and et cetera), and the new SCOTUS (after the 6 corrupt justices have been impeached and replacements seated) will probably at some point rule on the matter again. Assuming some litigants take it that far.

20

For good or bad, this country doesn’t have laws declaring a mulligan whenever our elected officials of that level get caught for something illegal. The question was posed on this board about what would happen if Obama was found to be not legally able to be president. The result is that all the laws he signed would still be in effect, illegal president or not.

Imagine if all one has to do to get a law overturned is to prove that an official who was instrumental in the law had some prior criminal element. Anyone who didn’t like a law could look through a candidate’s past and see “hey, he didn’t return his overdue library book!” and get all his laws instantly annulled.

Even if clearly illegal as in the OP’s example, the law would stand until it is legally removed. For the most part that has worked out