A Constitutional Amendment creating 18-year terms staggered every 2 years, so that each of the nine Justices would be replaced in order of seniority every other year. This would be a prospective proposal, and would be applied to future judges only. Doing this would move the court closer to the people by ensuring that every President would have the opportunity to replace two Justices per term, and that no court could stretch its ideology over multiple generations. Further, this reform would maintain judicial independence, but instill regularity to the nominations process, discourage Justices from choosing a retirement date based on politics, and will stop the ever-increasing tenure of Justices.
Eventually the justices would all serve 18 year terms, staggered so that the terms expired every 2 years.
I have brought this up before, but after the Kavanaugh fiasco the whole process of advise and consent has become so political I think it is time to have a more equitable way of appointing justices.
"The great problem of any civilization is how to rejuvenate itself without rebarbarization." - Will Durant "We've kept more promises than we've even made" - Donald Trump "Of what meaning is the world without mind? The question cannot exist." - Edwin Land
I favor this, but there needs to be an explicit provision about what to do about Supreme Court members who die or retire early. The same appointment process as now? Something else?
I like Rick Perry's suggestion. I doubt I will see that happen in what remains of my life, though.
No precept or claim is more likely to be false than one that can only be supported by invoking the claim of Divine authority for it--no matter who or what claims such authority.
“If you make people think they're thinking, they'll love you; but if you really make them think, they'll hate you.”
― Harlan Ellison
A Constitutional Amendment creating 18-year terms staggered every 2 years, so that each of the nine Justices would be replaced in order of seniority every other year. This would be a prospective proposal, and would be applied to future judges only. Doing this would move the court closer to the people by ensuring that every President would have the opportunity to replace two Justices per term, and that no court could stretch its ideology over multiple generations. Further, this reform would maintain judicial independence, but instill regularity to the nominations process, discourage Justices from choosing a retirement date based on politics, and will stop the ever-increasing tenure of Justices.
Eventually the justices would all serve 18 year terms, staggered so that the terms expired every 2 years.
I have brought this up before, but after the Kavanaugh fiasco the whole process of advise and consent has become so political I think it is time to have a more equitable way of appointing justices.
This is a great idea. Can we also get a Constitutional amendment addressing gerrymandering? We need to figure out a way to balance districts to make them competitive among political parties, not a guarantee for one or the other. In fact, if we can figure out this gerrymandering issue we might actually get some 3rd parties actually representing their electorate in Congress. That'd be kind of neat.
- Doc
In the face of madness, rationality has no power - Xiao Wang, US historiographer, 2287 AD.
Every record...falsified, every book rewritten...every statue...has been renamed or torn down, every date...altered...the process is continuing...minute by minute. History has stopped. Nothing exists except an endless present in which the Ideology is always right.
I agree that we need to take a serious look at some restructuring. I think the nomination process may be broken and not repairable as is. Perry's suggestion may be at least the start of a good idea. Eliminating gerrymandering is probably necessary, too. Sure, it's always happened to some degree. But modern computing power makes it much more effective. I think we may need more to break the lock of the two parties on the system, but I think that would be a good goal.
“The ideal subject of totalitarian rule is not the convinced Nazi or the dedicated communist, but people for whom the distinction between fact and fiction, true and false, no longer exists.”
― Hannah Arendt, The Origins of Totalitarianism, 1951
Themis wrote:It seems to me that some picks/decisions are so important that a simple majority should not be enough.
I agree with this. I'd be more supportive of an amendment making the filibuster law rather than Senate procedure than I would be interested in seeing the courts subjected to regular turnover due to both an increase in the number of justices and codifying partisanship and public opinion in their nomination process.
The world is always full of the sound of waves..but who knows the heart of the sea, a hundred feet down? Who knows it's depth? ~ Eiji Yoshikawa
Prior to the 2016 election, multiple Republican Senators and conservative judicial lobbying groups made it clear that they would not give Clinton the chance to nominate and appoint judges if they had the majority. "Merrick Garland, indefinitely" was almost certainly the plan. That's probably still the plan in the event that a Democrat is president and Democrats don't control the Senate. No judges for Democrats.
If you raise the bar for how many votes a Supreme Court justice needs, I think there's a decent chance that just cripples the courts as parties, especially the Republican party, refuses to compromise.
If you want to force broad partisan compromise, you need some sort of independent commission that makes consensus recommendations that gives parties veto power. This exists in a functional way in some states. The issue with that is it would significantly empower a minority party even when the will of the people contravenes it. This could lead to unacceptable retrenchment against political decisions. Imagine, for instance, what such a system would look like in 1937.
EAllusion wrote:If you raise the bar for how many votes a Supreme Court justice needs, I think there's a decent chance that just cripples the courts as parties, especially the Republican party, refuses to compromise.
There is a certain movement that views government dysfunction as being the inevitable result of representative government. The argument being that as soon as someone goes to Washington they are met with moneyed interests and lobbyists who inevitably corrupt the politician leading to this idea Washington as a whole is a swamp that needs to be drained. And within this movement is the idea that technology gives us the tools necessary for a true democracy to exist rather than having a professional political class.
I personally think that this is a terrible idea, precisely because it enables the worst aspects of democracy where every election becomes the naming of Boaty McBoatface.
To a lesser extent, this is the problem I see with terming Supreme Court justices as proposed. If there is a willingness to do as you suggest and obstruct every single justice when there is not a super-majority in the Senate with a President of the same party in office, we're already screwed. The system isn't functioning at that point. If we don't elect justices to fill vacancies or elect hyper partisan but termed justices, either way we are just watching the machine either grind to a halt or shake itself apart. Neither is functional. And given the choice between these two options, I think if there is no chance of erasing the filibuster as there was for Republicans with Garland/Gorsuch, we'd be far more likely to see the inevitable pressure to fill the vacancies force Presidents to nominate sufficiently moderate justices to get past the filibuster.
The world is always full of the sound of waves..but who knows the heart of the sea, a hundred feet down? Who knows it's depth? ~ Eiji Yoshikawa
honorentheos wrote: To a lesser extent, this is the problem I see with terming Supreme Court justices as proposed. If there is a willingness to do as you suggest and obstruct every single justice when there is not a super-majority in the Senate with a President of the same party in office, we're already ____. The system isn't functioning at that point.
We're already there, just without the "super-majority" part. Republicans will not appoint Democratic nominated judges except at the margins. What happened at the end of Obama's term is the new norm. Democrats probably will return the favor, though because the Senate is extremely Republican-leaning at the moment, this probably just means that Republicans get total control of the judiciary over time since a Republican unified government is much more likely that a Democrat one. Adding in a needed super-majority just makes it so justices are never appointed and gives Democrats the tools needed to even out the Republican advantage in the Senate.
I'm not sure what fixes this, but this proposal isn't it.