Term limits. No politician (and I include judges) should have a lifetime appointment.
Re term limits: I almost added that in my initial post.
I was thinking particularly about the Supremes. The original idea behind lifetime appointments was that they could focus on the law and be apolitical. It clearly hasn’t worked out that way.
I think that after 20 years on the bench they get stale, and the average Justice, serving often until death or complete disability, is on longer than that. Senility is also a problem.
So, the idea I was rolling around was this: When a Supreme Court Justice needs to be appointed, his term is either 13 or 17 years (drawn from a hat). Those numbers push his replacement out 3 or 4 terms, will never line up with elections in a predictable way, and are long enough. I’d combine it with an age limit as well—maybe 75 or 77. That way, you’d get experienced judges, mostly in their mid to late 50’s, at the height of their experience and reasoning capacity.
Since the electorate will not term limit politicians, term limits need to be imposed by constitutional amendment. In a more perfect world judges could function well with lifetime appointments. But what we’ve got is far from perfect and so judges should be appointed for a set amount of time, say six years like senators. In addition, repeal of the 17th Amendment would be a major improvement. The 17th Amendment to the United States Constitution established the popular election of United States Senators by the people of the states. The amendment supersedes Article I, §3, Clauses 1 and 2 of the Constitution, under which senators were elected by state legislatures.