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The concept is sound enough, but even if it survives long enough for the House to vote on it and send it to the Senate, the bill dies there. Whether or not it's of any real value, civics teachers and historians love to speak of the Supreme Court as this sacred ediface disconnected from elections and politics and the only lifelong position in US government.
The game has been the same since forever:
The president nominates.
The Senate confirms.
If you control both the Presidency and the Senate, you can fill any vacancy however you like (the 60 vote cloture used to require a modicum of good will from minority party, but those days are gone now.)
If you control only one of those two things, you're going to have to negotiate and compromise.
If you control neither, then you whine and cry and stomp your feet like a little baby. (Not being partisan here, they both do it and it's pathetic every single time we see it.)
When putting in a fairly partisan justice, make sure they're as young as possible so they'll be there for as long as possible.
What people who don't pay attention fail to realize is that the game extends to Supreme Court justices.
If your party controls both and you're getting older, now is the time to retire.
If your party controls one but not the other, it's not ideal but now is an acceptable time to retire.
If your party controls neither, then even if you've survived cancer three times and had five heart attacks, you're going to try to ride it out long enough because it's guaranteed that the opposition will flip your seat.
Scalia got caught trying to ride it out. So did Ginsberg. Neither of them quite made it. Scalia got luckier than Ginsberg and that's about it.
A set term limit might limit justices ability to time their retirements. Personally, I'd rather see an age limit instead of a term limit. The greater problem is that people who are too damn old are sticking around on the Supreme Court beyond the point of their mental and physical soundness. The idea of a time limit also has merit, but I think that the age and mental wellness questions are in far greater need of answering first.
The bigger reason I find the move distasteful: Whenever they're not getting their way, the Democrats set about trying to rewrite the rules of the game. The nuclear option blew up in their faces, but they seem to want to muck with the rules again anyways.
When "judicial activism" replaced interpretation of the Constitution with extrapolation of the Constitution the Supreme Court transformed itself into the Supreme Politbureau. That's why there hasn't been a substantive Constitutional amendment in fifty years and likely will never be another one.
An 18 year term is no solution to the problem of legislation without representation. You can do a lot of damage in 18 years if you're an unelected, unaccountable policy maker. The only real solution is to make "judicial activists" stand for election every two to four years like every other policy maker in a democratic society.
I've often wondered what would happen if a Supreme Court Justice came down with Alzheimer's and the other justices were cognizant of the situation. Should they contact Congress and the President about this? We all know that this is going to happen someday. Supreme Court Justices tend to hold on to their jobs to an age that would be intolerable for a Presidential Candidate. We've got the oldest Presidential candidates in history. Remember when most of us thought that Reagan was getting to be an old geezer? He'd be the "kid" in the current lineup. As we age, our faculties do decline. There aren't any 50 year old quarterbacks. What about a 100 year old Supreme Court Justice? Is there a line to be drawn somewhere?
I thought Trump supporters were all bout Term limits?
While their at it Term limits for politicians too.
Term limits is a mixed bag because you have to toss out the good with the bad.
I would be more inclined to limit voting by morons and leeches and anyone else that has a desire and ability to pimp the system - looking at you donor class.
Then why has an amendment happened to the constitution for a total of 27 times?
Tends to require an overwhelming consensus and a pretty strong sense of urgency. The 13th, 14th and 15th happened because we'd just fought a bloody war to free the slaves and we needed to insert some guarantees that blacks would be treated equally. Only took us 100 years to live up to that, but the Amendments were timely at least, and that was because there was a real sense of urgency.
The 18th Amendment was passed with a sense of urgency that the devil's alcohol must be stopped. Then the 21st Amendment passed with even greater enthusiasm because everyone just wanted to get drunk again.
What's the sense of urgency that would push a Constitutional Amendment through limiting SCOTUS justices to 18 years? Comes off as just more weird games -- like Harry Reid's nuclear option -- than anything else. How do you really sell it well enough that about 75% of Americans are really enthusiastically pushing for it? I mean hell, we've got about 75% of Americans who are in favor of a balanced budget amendment, but the American people lack the enthusiasm to actually make that one happen.
I'm for it if the Democrats do a term limits bill saying the House and the Senate can only serve 2 terms.
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