Senate Democrats introduced legislation on Thursday to place term limits on Supreme Court justices, reigniting debate around the issue championed by Democrats in the House and the Senate.
When a deeply corrupt branch is responsible for installing appointments to another branch with no public accountability whatsoever... yeah. One bad apple spoils the barrel, and a solid half of the barrel is nothing but the most pungent, loathsome rot.
Weren't a few of them outright begging for people to not cling to political parties? They probably were hoping that the courts would remain bipartisan just because they would be on the stands longer than whatever recent trend was going on when they were nominated in.
Whereas if they had terms like the other branches they would always be voted in based on current issues.
Of course, at the time they did all this, Judicial Review hadn't even been conceived yet, let alone using judicial review to undo other supreme court cases en-masse.
Jefferson, when the Court granted itself the power of judicial review (which, yes, they just gave themselves because they were the authority and nothing said they couldn't) warned us about despotism from the courts. For as many flaws as that man had, he was dead-on about that
I mean I definitely get their reasoning behind it. I’m just saying that I don’t understand how they didn’t realize lifetime appointments could lead to some really shitty consequences if the wrong people were put in power.
Like, they set term limits for everything else because they saw the absolute shitfest what having a lifetime-appointed official could have with the king, but they didn’t think about the possibility of the supreme court getting filled with people who were just as, if not more, awful?
Weren't a few of them outright begging for people to not cling to political parties?
For the most part they were stupid to do so. Coalition building is independent of even government system. Look at the political parties behind the Nikea riots during the reign of Emperor Justinian. The truth is you could have sortition form the legislative branch and they would STILL develop political parties.
I know a fair few Republicans have also said they wanted this. So I fully expect them to oppose this on the basis of "if a dem proposed it, it must be SATANISM".
I feel like this purposal doesn't tackle the subject appropriately.
Historically there's been streaks of one party winning elections (like 1869-1885) this kind of change might end up ensuring the SCOTUS is even more polarized.
I think an approach more focused on auditing justices to ensure they don't fall to impropriety would make more sense.
First of all having the supreme court be political at all is bizarre. They should be some of the best judges in a country that enforce the law in the most fair way possible and they shouldn't be elected, they should be hired.
But if you are gonna do that, the judges that are elected should reflect the current political views of the majority and not what people thought years ago.
If the people decide that one party is better for many years, the judges should be of that party. Basically if the people are "polarized" the supreme court should be "polarized" as well.
To be fair for the most part Scotus judges aren't really 'republican' or 'democrat' but are normally grouped based on how they interpret law, with completely different names like 'originalists' or 'textualists'. The idea was them being nonpolitical arbitrers of law. But of course they're still appointed by presidents who fall into a party who insert bias by selecting someone they like.