BFD.
Posted on 09/19/2022 3:32:33 PM PDT by Right Wing Vegan
Lifetime appointments to the U.S. Supreme Court would end, under a proposal unveiled Monday by conservative, progressive, and libertarian constitutional scholars. Supreme Court justices would serve staggered 18-year terms moving forward.
The change to Supreme Court tenure stood out among a set of five proposed constitutional amendments prepared for the National Constitution Center. None of the amendments has been introduced formally, either to Congress or through the states.
“There shall be nine judges of the supreme court, who shall hold their offices for staggered terms of eighteen years, such that every two years there shall be a vacancy,” according to the amendment. “In the event of a vacancy resulting from death, resignation, impeachment, or other inability to perform the duties of the office, a new judge shall be appointed for the duration of the term only. After a term of office has expired, the judge whose term has expired may elect to sit on an inferior court during good behavior, which court is to be determined by the Chief Justice or as Congress shall direct.”
“After this article is ratified, the senior-most judge currently serving on the supreme court, calculated by time served on the court, shall retire by the next presidential inauguration,” the proposed amendment continued. “The President after said inauguration shall nominate a successor. Every two years thereafter for sixteen years, the most senior remaining judge shall retire by January 20, whose successor shall be nominated by the sitting President after that date. In the event of a vacancy resulting from the death, resignation, or impeachment of a judge of the supreme court sitting as of the time this article is adopted, a new judge shall be appointed for the duration of the term that would have otherwise elapsed according to this section.”
If this provision were in place today, Associate Justice Clarence Thomas would be the first justice forced into retirement. He has served on the U.S. Supreme Court since 1991.
Ilan Wurman of Arizona State University’s law school, representing conservatives, labels the proposed amendment a compromise in a “raging battle” over the Supreme Court’s future.
“We fix the number of Supreme Court justices at nine,” Wurman said during an online discussion. “So no possibility of court-packing or changing the number save a future constitutional amendment.”
Staggered 18-year terms ensure two Supreme Court appointments every presidential term, Wurman explained. “We know like clockwork there are going to be two appointments. It reduces the temperature of confirmation battles,” he said.
Confirmations are automatic within three months of a nomination unless the Senate votes against the appointment. “What does this mean? Merrick Garland may not have been approved, but he would have gotten a vote,” Wurman said.
Garland, now the Biden administration’s attorney general, never saw a vote on his nomination to the U.S. Supreme Court during the closing months of Barack Obama’s presidency.
Caroline Fredrickson of Georgetown Law School, representing progressives, supported a larger Supreme Court. She was willing to set that preference aside to secure a compromise containing term limits.
“We also believe that term limits are good government,” she said. “It’s completely anomalous in the world, except for a very few … countries that have life tenure for their highest courts.”
“It just doesn’t make any sense to have somebody be able to be in [that] kind of position — especially with the way judicial review works in the United States and the immense power that the Supreme Court has to determine the direction of our lives for generations.”
Ilya Shapiro of the Manhattan Institute, representing libertarians, cautioned against overselling the amendment as a way to cool down Supreme Court political debates.
“This would make the court even more a part of presidential and Senate campaigns,” Shapiro said. “But it would eliminate arbitrary or politically timed retirements, morbid health watches over octogenarian justices, appointments of 23-year-olds so they can serve for 80 years, and those sorts of things that detract from public confidence in the court as an institution.”
Jon Guze, senior fellow in legal studies at the John Locke Foundation, offered a favorable assessment of the plan. “Of the proposed changes to the way seats on the U.S. Supreme Court are filled, this is one of the most sensible I’ve seen,” Guze told Carolina Journal. “It would go a long way toward cooling the partisan intensity of the nomination and approval process.”
“Unfortunately, it wouldn’t work in North Carolina, where our Supreme Court justices are elected, but it would be awfully nice if something could be done to cool the partisan intensity that has characterized the court in recent years,” Guze added.
The proposed Supreme Court changes are tied to a larger group of revisions, dubbed Amendment XXXI, dealing with federal appointments. The amendment also would change rules regarding Senate confirmation of presidential treaties and appointments.
Other proposed amendments deal with changes to presidential eligibility, a legislative veto of executive actions, impeachments, and the future of the constitutional amendment process. All are tied to the Constitution Drafting Project at the National Constitution Center.
Nine scholars compiled the list of amendments. Each amendment required at least six votes, with at least one vote from each of the three ideological groups.
“Team Conservative” featured Wurman, Robert George of Princeton University, Michael McConnell of Stanford Law School, and Colleen Sheehan of Arizona State University. “Team Libertarian” featured Shapiro, Timothy Sandefur of the Goldwater Institute, and Christina Mulligan of Brooklyn Law School. “Team Progressive” featured Fredrickson and Jamal Greene of Columbia Law School.
Conservative, progressive, and libertarian groups also submitted their own separate groups of constitutional revisions. The National Constitution Center is a private, nonprofit group that bills itself as “America’s leading platform for constitutional education and debate.”
Lolz. No genuine conservative would be on a "team" working alongside teams of leftists and libertarians to push goofy amendments to the Constitution. We don't need staggered terms for SC Justices nominated at every presidential election, unavoidably becoming part of the campaign trail, nor SC Justices worrying about how the popularity of their legal interpretations will affect their post-term careers careers. The list goes on and on and on. Sorry progressives and libertarians, you can self-designate a "team conservative" and I will still only see liberals, libertarians, and at best a few neocons/globalists
Inauguration, that is.
BFD.
They will literally coyote ugly themselves to get rid of Thomas
So, 2/3 of the Senate will vote to reduce their own power? I don’t think so.
Any “so-called” conservative associated with this group is, undoubtedly, either a POS RINO globalist or a long-time sleeper agent now coming out of the closet...
“proposal unveiled…by conservative, progressive and libertarian constitutional scholars.”
In other words, this is the product of an academic discussion that treats legal voices upholding the Constitution and unconstitutional Jews of socialists as equally valid. No thanks.
OMG!!
Autocorrected from “socialist views” to “socialist Jews.”
While we certainly have politics mixed in now...I think the court we have right now is the best court we will have for the next 20-30 years.
typical leftist racism, anything to get a black man kicked out of his job
Then SCOTUS should decide presidential elections come every 7 months.
This fantasy has a snowball’s chance in Hades of happening unless Uncle Joe Stolen does it by Executive Order and Congress, the media and everyone else just sits there and says “golly, nothing we can do about it.”
Since he was confirmed to a lifetime appointment, he could not be forced into retirement constitutionally. It’s like Truman was not affected by term limits - ex post facto and all.
Yeah, I know, the disregard for the constitution is high.
The left would insist that any justice opposed to the idea recuse himself.
I looked at the five:
Term limits for the Supreme Court BUT NOT FOR Congress or Senate.
Excuse me, but their bias is showing.
First, this amendment HAS BEEN introduced, by Senator Whitehouse (D-RI).
Some of our states have term limits and/or age limits for justices; e.g., Florida has an age limit of 75. Some of our states (not necessarily the same) have term limits on legislators. It would be interesting to see how these have worked out.
But, the Supreme Court and the judiciary would be degraded as a separate and equal branch of government if the Supreme Court were to have a “short” term limit, relative to the lack of term limit for Congress. With term limits on the Supreme Court but not on Congress, we’d reduce the Supreme Court to subsidiary status relative to the Congress.
Plus, is it a deliberate oversight for Supreme Court justices to have a term limit and not lower level Article 1 judges? Or, just a gratuitous insult? This proposed amendment is nothing but an emotional reaction to the Dobbs decision. It is NOT a well thought out consideration of how lifetime appointments have evolved.
With appropriate term limits for the House of Representatives and Senate (e.g., 12 and 24 years), I would consider term limits for Article 1 judges and justices (e.g., 12 years renewable once for district-level judges; and, 24 for appellate judges and Supreme Court justices).
First and foremost, repeal the 17th Amendment. Forget everything else until that is accomplished.
Yes! Repeal the 17th amendment!
That amendment took state government representation out of the federal government. It also started the crap politics of the senate. If senators didn’t have to appeal to voters, they’d be much more responsible with spending, court nominees, etc.
I took a class on touting.
After that, people looked up to me.
It’s a skill that will help carry you though life.
See Demos
I know of someone who worked behind the scenes in re Demos.. For years.. Tightly connected to Ayers.
The guy I refer to is evil.
https://watchdoglab.substack.com/p/president-biden-is-pushing-to-federalize
https://www.demos.org/search?keys=Tim+best&sort_bef_combine=search_api_relevance_DESC
How about limiting Congress and Senate to two terms? That would be better! Just limit SCOTUS to age 80.
However, these days the terrorists have found ways to influence the sovereign judgments by harming the jurists' families. And a lot of those terrorizing elements count themselves an integral part of an aggregated socialist-progressive political body. One way is to hinder or block the appointment of a jurist whose forte is "Original Intent" that is essentially timeless, based on inborn character flaws that have been remedied by practiced maturity in application of spiritual principles.
The unprincipled characters claiming that the Constitution that implements the Founders' Biblical principles should be changeable according to cultural shifts, are continually attempting to overcome a conservative mentality.
One of such conflicts was whether the judge, Robert Bork, should occupy an emptied seat. Joe Biden and the Borking of Supreme Court Nominees
Excerpt quoting Mary Ellen Bork letter of two years ago:In his place, and less "moderate" than Lewis Powell who vacated the seat, Anthony affirmed Roe vs Wade and the Obergfell same-sex marriage, of both which Bork would never have passed as justice that affirms righteous morality (a la John Adams regarding the Constitution). Bret Kavanaugh replaced him, adding to "original intent:; but now, after Stephen :Living Constitution: Breyer retired, guess who appointed someone to replace him, and what the philosophy of that affirmed candidate is likely to be?
"After Bob left the court in 1988 to devote himself to writing and teaching, Democrats would often come up to him to apologize for the way the Democratic politicians treated him and would leave with tears in their eyes. We will all have tears in our eyes if Joe Biden is elected president."
(I can guess, with a sad conclusion of its destruction of the land into which I was born, before WWII).
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