Picking Up The SCOTUS Term Limit Meme
By Justin Gardner | Related entries in Supreme CourtMontag first wrote about it Wall Street Journal runs with it:
A seat on the high court is now so powerful and so heady that many justices stay long past their prime. Legal scholars have concluded that half of the last 10 retirees have been too feeble or inattentive to fully participate in the work of the court.
Ann Althouse (hat tip) poses a different idea.
While we do criticize Justices for their opinions, we hold back from criticizing them for clinging to their seats too long. I think we may be observing the general social norm that frowns on age discrimination and accommodates disability. But maybe we ought to set aside that generality and get specific about Supreme Court Justices: they wield immense power and they cling to it. Why don’t we talk about that? Why don’t we shame them for staying too long?
I would say that shaming simply doesn’t work when you’re in a position that lofty. You’re essentially above the law. We need to set a standard for the SCOTUS and I feel that term limits of 16 years are fair and just.
Thoughts?
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July 25th, 2005 at 10:43 am
There have been a number of quite reasonable proposals for SCOTUS term limits that people have floated this year. 18 years is a popular limit, as it means that a justice will depart every 2 years – thus making the politics of presidential appointment a little more predictable.
It would take a constitutional ammendment, but it’s hard to see why this doesn’t draw bi-partisan support. Is either party really helped by the current environment, where every judicial appointment must be contested to the last?
July 25th, 2005 at 11:09 am
Doug said it.
July 25th, 2005 at 11:15 am
He most certainly did.
July 25th, 2005 at 1:43 pm
I’m perfectly willing to entertain term limits for Supreme Court Justices — AFTER we establish such limits for Congress-critters.
It’s not only that Congress-folk seem to have lifetime appointments as that they treat their seats as inheritable property to pass to spouses, (Libby Dole, Hillary Clinton, Jean Carnahan, Mrs Sonny Bono) siblings (Teddy Kennedy) and offspring (Jay Rockefeller, Dick Armey jr.) etc.
Let’s fix the bigger problem first, eh?
July 25th, 2005 at 2:22 pm
Yeah, the Congress is actually pretty bad about this. Usually the only way you get one of them out is if you can throw a lot of money behind a challenger candidate. No wonder pork reigns supreme in Washington. It’s fundamentally baked into the system so these people will continually be elected.
What are your solutions?
July 25th, 2005 at 5:11 pm
Justin: links in the OP are a bit wonky.
Impose term limits on SC justices, and that will have an influence on how they argue in the last year or months. That could be good, or bad.
Meanwhile: no one was crying for term limits back when Oliver Wendell Holmes was on the bench.
Term limits feels to me like it enforces the “this is a game” aspect of government, and not in a good way. That is to say, if this is in place, then political parties will try to game the rules in a way they can’t game nearly as easily now (“When will this guy leave?” “Hell if I know!”).
As for Congressional terms, I’m sorta in favor there, but the pork problem isn’t what’s baked into the system; it’s a cultural problem, rather. I highly suspect that people vote on the basis of a small handful of reasons, particularly name familiarity, position on a key issue. In fact, you could draw a parallel from anything which influences a person’s vote, to something similar which influences a person’s choice of dish soap.
Ideally, I would propose the solution I tend to apply like a metaphorical hammer to nearly all of society’s ills today: better and freer information, and a culture that encourages its usage.
Americans should have a tradition of going to, oh, say, http://www.elections.org, during “Cram Week”, the week before election day. Click on the link to their locale, and up comes the issues that will be on the ballot. Included will be a clearing house of links to: the text of any propositions, amendments, etc. up for popular vote; each candidate’s official website; laundry list of each candidate’s stand on issues of importance in as plain a language as possible (no rhetoric or ambiguous politico-speak, etc.); each candidate’s voting record, if they are incumbent or have held previous offices; transcripts of debates; campaign funding information cross-referenced from opensecrets.org. Elections.org would be like C-SPAN for election data, in a sense. All information on it would be freely available for printing and distributing, provided any document on it is not edited to take things out of context. Any person is consequently just an Internet connection away from everything they really ought to know in order to vote, and any candidate (even independent) is a website registration fee away from making that information completely available. Bandwidth for this site could and should be paid for by federal tax dollars.
July 25th, 2005 at 5:48 pm
Agreed (sort of), but I still say that I’m sure many think that a Congressman’s duty to their district is to bring back money from Washington. Sometimes it’s good and sometimes it’s not. But if they don’t, well, you can bet they’re not going to get elected again. That’s a surefire way to get on the bad side of most voters and “kingmakers.”
And yes, yes, yes to this, by the way…
July 26th, 2005 at 12:35 pm
Ugh! I sure hope not to many think that’s what their Congressman is for… Honestly, I don’t know the precise reality here. Where I grew up (rural Texas), general feeling seemed to be that Congress should leave us the hell alone, as much as possible. Defend the shores, keep the judges paid, and have the roads built; we ordinary folk will handle the rest. I imagine a good busybody Congressman would be one that kept our property taxes from being raised again. But unless that Congressman could call rain and make cattle magically impervious to disease, we weren’t all that interested…
What leads you to your observation, then? And how about everyone else? (Not that I’m expecting much response to a thread now buried deep in the blog…)