This would be a good start, though it’s probably too late for meaningful enough change to our system of government.
18 years is too long. The longer a person is allowed to keep authority, the greater the odds of corruption become. I have proposed 10 year terms in the past, but still feel uncomfortable about letting anyone have that much time.
People have told me that justices are supposed to stay a long time, to offer stability and to be free of political campaigns. However, the longer the Trump Regime operates, the greater disbelief that I have in long-held offices. To me, it feels like that I was told lies by the people who opposed term and age limits.
I support 18 years, it is better than lifetime appointment.
I would also support 9 years per term, with no limit on number of terms, but requiring full process (including Senate consultation and approval) for re-appointments.
The problem I see with shorter terms is more opportunity for a corrupt executive branch to pack the court with corrupt, or at least highly political, justices. With 18 year terms they could be staggered out so one justice every 2 years would reach the end of their term and need to be replaced, limiting that to 2 justices per presidential term.
But, with shorter terms, they also get reviewed/replaced more often, in fact with 9 year terms, they get at most 2 executives / 2 senates safe.
I’m ok with this. Long enough to develop institutional knowledge, but eliminates the “I’m set for life and nobody can do anything to me” attitudes.
Plus about half the court would cycle out right this moment.
I suspect this would only apply to justices going forward; even if this passed, we’re stuck with the current ppl.
Not the exact amendment that the article is about. It’s explicit that anyone over the limit is gone when it’s ratified.
And if they cycle out right now we’d have Trump / Federalist Society pics
Given the way the Democrats behave even if they were in power the Republicans would just have to complain that’s it’s 4 years too close to an election and the end result would be the same.
This is a constitutional amendment, y’all realize that’s a generational project, right? Impeachment and removal are trivial by comparison.
Actually, the way that some of these recent bills have been worded is designed to be achievable without an amendment:
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Justices that reach their term limit would be assigned “senior status”
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they would still hold their appointment for life, but wouldnt actually serve on the Court again unless there was a vacancy
By doing it this way, they preserve the “lifetime appointment” part in the Constitution while still leaving room for a regular infusion of new people
NGL, this is clever as fuck.
This is the kind of shit I want out of democrats. I know rule of law is iffy right now but damn I rather have them doing shit like this than peering down their glasses at us.
I wonder what the Baileys would think of this.
Can I drink them from a shoe?
why would you lie about that
By doing it this way, they preserve the “lifetime appointment” part in the Constitution while still leaving room for a regular infusion of new people
…Until someone brings a lawsuit, which goes to the Supreme Court and they conveniently decide for themselves that the law imposing term limits on them is unconstitutional.
“Lifetime appointment” is still appropriate phrasing if part of their posting includes that they WILL be summarily “removed” if they are shown to be partisan.
/S obviously
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If a 2nd American Civil War happens, we would have many generational projects to complete. Might as well get discussion about them started now, so that implementation can happen quickly when the time comes.
Not really. The Constitution says that the SCOTUS exists but other than that, Congress can manage it. There have been MANY more than 9 justices in the past, and there have been many less. In each case, Congress passed a law setting that number.
Way too long, but if it could be retroactively in effect then maybe.
Way too long
With no limits on tenure, the average Supreme Court term since 1993 has reached 28 years — over twice as long as most peer countries. I would say that knocking 10 years off this average - particularly when three of the worst judges are already over the limit would yield an immediate and dramatic improvement in court functions. I also don’t know what the optimal SCOTUS tenure should be. 8 years? 12 years? 2 years? Presumably, you want extended terms to cement court precedent. But, idk, maybe you don’t?
Unfortunately, I can’t seem to find any actual text of this bill. Just a bunch of headlines announcing the announcement.
So it’s very possible he’s grandfathered sitting SCOTUS judges in, at which point the bill would be worse than performative.
“The tenure in office of a justice of the Supreme Court may not exceed 18 years. In the case of any justice who is serving as of the ratification of this amendment, if the tenure in office of that justice is 18 years or more, that term of that justice shall be terminated. If such a justice is the Chief Justice, the position shall be filled in accordance with law.”
That’s the entirety of the proposed amendment.
Seems pretty straightforward. But do we really want to give Trump a chance to get 3 more justices that will rule the courts for the next 18 years?
Exactly. A phased rollout could give successive administrations opportunity to select their own. But let’s not be naïve: they’d all quit now to give their seats to Trump appointees.
“In the case of any justice who is serving as of the ratification of this amendment, if the tenure in office of that justice is 18 years or more, that term of the justice having the longest tenure shall be terminated immediately. Every two years thereafter the next longest tenured justice shall be teminated until such time no justice having over 18 years tenure remains.”
A better solution would be an expansion then contraction. Add 2 seats every two years for 6 years, then start removing at 18 years two years after we have 15 justices. Hopefully by that time most will have voluntary left anyway,and we will have had enough executive and congressional turnover to make this more fair and representative.
Good point about people resigning early. That would probably be a problem no matter what. If someone was at 16 years, they would probably be incentivized to retire early if they thought the next president wouldn’t be from their party.
Right now, judges almost never resign, so they just happen to die whenever most of the time, which allows conservatives to replace liberal judges and vice versa (in theory). Resigning early would likely be a huge problem.
Might have to do something like say each president gets to nominate a maximum of 2 justices. Those two justices being the people with the longest tenure on the court. If someone dies, that counts as nomination. If the president has already used their 2 nominations, then the next president will appoint a replacement.
8 or 10 sounds okay since they’re appointed by POTUS, shorter terms might be problematic because it would make it easier to stack unless we limit that power somehow. I don’t want mummies holding office forever to cement precedent, I want progress which aligns with the views of the current majority of voters.
H.J.Res. 174: Proposing an amendment to the Constitution of the United States to provide for term limits for justices of the Supreme Court.
https://www.congress.gov/bill/119th-congress/house-joint-resolution/174?hl=H.J.Res.+174&s=4&r=1
https://www.congress.gov/119/bills/hjres174/BILLS-119hjres174ih.pdf
8 or 10 sounds okay
But why? Like, what’s the reasoning of 10 years rather than 12 or 6 or 24? It seems like we’re trying to apply a magic number to a policy problem. If the SCOTUS judges come to the same rules with different term limits, are we going to come back here and say we need to fiddle with the magic number some more?
I don’t want mummies holding office forever to cement precedent
I think one of the upshots of lifetime term limits has been younger and younger bench appointees. Roberts was 50 when he took the job.
H.J.Res. 174: Proposing an amendment to the Constitution of the United States to provide for term limits for justices of the Supreme Court.
Well, there’s the damned thing. Not great that it has zero co-sponsors. But I guess people are talking about it, which is nice.
“The tenure in office of a justice of the Supreme Court may not exceed 18 years. In the case of any justice who is serving as of the ratification of this amendment, if the tenure in office of that justice is 18 years or more, that term of that justice shall be terminated. If such a justice is the Chief Justice, the position shall be filled in accordance with law.”
Ah, I see he’s got balls enough to put the right kind of language in there. Wish he could rally some other reps behind this idea before he launched it.
In support of 18 it’s terms staggered every two years with the current 9 justices, so each president gets two. Personally I’d hope after year 1 and year 3, so as to avoid any tomfoolery of immediately taking office and installing a troublemaker.
Not quite sure how I’d handle it if we get to 13 Justices like we’ll need to.
Putting aside age and term limits aside, I think adding more checks and balances to SCOTUS appointees would be important. The current process puts the appointment of justices into too few hands.
In a revised USA, I think the nation should be divided into regions with their own judiciaries and executive offices, but each region sends justices to represent them on the national supreme court. If the US was in four pieces, and each could contribute four justices apiece, that would be 16. Toss in the president of each region picking a justice to represent their administration, and that is 20 justices. The four presidents of the regions also pick a figurehead president to represent the nation, who in turn chooses a head justice to assist the supreme court proceedings and to be a tie breaker when the other 20 justices can’t agree.
By dividing up representation like this, it would be harder for the supreme court to become corrupt and stratified.
EDIT: A thought. The justices that a region assigns, 2 of them could be picked by the region’s congress, 2 by their judiciary. This might further reduce the odds of corruption.
I like the idea of lifetime appointments but a new justice every two years. This eventually dilutes the power of any individual judge.
An interesting idea. But, again, I don’t know what this does to shape current SCOTUS policy.
It is explicitly retroactive.
Here’s the entire amendment:
“The tenure in office of a justice of the Supreme Court may not exceed 18 years. In the case of any justice who is serving as of the ratification of this amendment, if the tenure in office of that justice is 18 years or more, that term of that justice shall be terminated. If such a justice is the Chief Justice, the position shall be filled in accordance with law.”
If I had to guess, that math might be if you were to have a new justice appointed every 2 years, which IMO is reasonable. 9 total justices, so 18 years before a given seat’s rotation would come up again.
A sitting president could nominate 2 justices in a single term, 4 if they win a second. That allows the greatest amount of turnover in an 8-year period without enabling a single president to fill a majority of the court with their own picks during their term.
The Constitution specifies that the justices and other federal judges shall serve “during good behavior.” This is interpreted as a lifetime appointment, subject to impeachment. That’s why this proposal is written as a constitutional amendment. It would need a 2/3 majority in both houses, and then 3/4 of state legislatures would need to ratify.
There’s another idea floating around to impose de facto term limits by regular federal law by rotating justices in and out of lower federal courts at defined intervals.
There are also a bunch of other things that an angry Congress could do to rein in the court (using regular federal law):
- they could use the good behavior clause to impose a written ethics code, or the CLE requirement that another commenter mentioned.
- they can set the court’s jurisdiction (except for suits between states). They can take jurisdiction away.
- On another jurisdictional topic: currently nearly all of the court’s docket is discretionary. They get to decide which cases to take up. Congress can take that power away and force the court to hear appeals on a mandatory basis again.
- Congress controls the annual budget. They get to decide whether the justices have money for clerks, robes, and office supplies or not.
- Congress can specify what dates the court is in session and for how long. At least one time, this power was used to try to prevent the court from meeting.
- Likewise, for a large part of the court’s history, Congress decreed that the court meet in the basement of the Capitol. Not the big fancy marble building. It could happen again.
- as part of its oversight power, Congress has the power to subpoena justices to hearings and to grill them on their decisions on live TV. This actually happened to Justice Kennedy after Bush v. Gore.
Personally, I would consider term and age limits to be part of good behavior. The supreme court, much like the presidency, should be held to much higher standards than most positions of authority. Good mental health, understanding of the world, and general decency, isn’t a big ask.
This will never fly like this. Republicans arnt going to vote out thier majority. But it’s good to start trying to push the idea and make it an actual law some day.
They will if framed that they could get a 9-0 SCOTUS and “insert magical racist imagery here”
What would be a realistic argument for and against this. Seems like if your party is in the majority regardless you wouldn’t want it and vice versa.
Originally, the Supreme Court was just supposed to be the highest court. The Founding Fathers wanted those positions to be apolitical, and they thought a good way of doing that would be making the position last a lifetime. I.e., if you dont have to worry about getting re-elected, your decisions will be more pure.
Things changed due to Marbury vs. Madison, where the court gave itself the power of judicial review, essentially the power to change laws, which is where they became much more powerful. Nowadays, people are taught that there are 3 branches of government with checks and balances over each other, which is true, but it was not originally that way until Marbury vs. Madison.
The problem with literally any government form, though, is that there is never any immunity to bad actors. Term limits dont necessarily solve anything, but if the justices are acting like any other politician anyway, we might as well treat them that way.
I would argue the best solution is ironclad ethics rules that are grounds for impeachment. E.g., if you are clearly owned by a billionaire, you should be impeached. That comes back around to the “no safety from bad actors”-problem, though, when congress refuses to do the “right” thing.
Forbid Supreme Court justices from ever owning anything ever again after they become justices. Establish a community for Supreme Court justices that has nice houses, amenities, everything that they could reasonably want, and then require that they and their immediate families live in the Supreme Court compound. Anyone found violating this oath is stripped of all benefits and exiled to Scottsdale Arizona to live out the remainder of their miserable lives.
How about 10 years with a 24 hour CE requirement in constitutional law and ethics every 24 months?
The founders didn’t account for the level of government vulnerability to bad actors when they made SC seats lifetime appointments.
Or disproportional representation, the Patriot Act, Citizens United, etc…so many huge holes left for those who would exploit them.
So much has changed that makes term limits in SCOTUS an important check on assholes. But those who have helped usher in the fuckery items listed above will do all they can to avoid losing ground. They’ll trample all over we the people as long as they can continue to sucker the rubes into actually voting for this shit show.
The founders didn’t account for the level of government vulnerability to bad actors when they made SC seats lifetime appointments.
The founders didn’t account for lot’s of shit; it’s time to stop pretending these were uniquely wise geniuses and accept that they were shitty politicians just like we’ve got now. America has not changed, corruption, government oppression, and tyranny have been features of our government from day 1. There was no Revolution, more like an under new management.
Way too long, but anything limiting is better than what we have now. Probably need parameters around “election” and timing defined specifically. That would be gamified.
I would also have this go beyond the SC.
