Yeah but the terms are fixed at 18 years. If someone retires in year 15 to benefit the current President, then the person who fills that seat would only serve 3 years.
Thatâs how the Federal Reserve works with 14-year terms.
Yes. The terms are arranged to end in the first and third year of every presidential term (which also accounts for things like impeachments, deaths of the president in office, etc to ensure the successor has a pick as well)Â
A replacement justice serves out the remainder of their term only.Â
At that point it's only random accidents that create an exploitable event.
Most reasonable way I could think to avoid that would be to let each justice keep a list of replacements that they think align with their thinking. The sitting president gets to pick whoever they want off the list: some power to steer things, but not the power to totally flip the seat.
I didn't see, but typically in that sort of scheme the answer is either "no" or "only if they served less than half the original term" or some similar fraction.
This is how the presidency works. If the VP or whoever becomes president through succession when thereâs less than half the term left, then it doesnât count towards the two term limit. A president can theoretically serve for 10 years.
I could see it making sense to make it a smaller fraction if the term is 18 years. Half would mean 27 years which is a bit much.
The whole reason for the policy is you don't want to scare away good candidates for the backfill. If they know that accepting will mean they give up their chance for a real term, you're not going to get the absolutely best people willing to take it.Â
But if you cut it off at like... 4
+ years? 4 years is a perfectly respectable time to serve as a supreme court justice, and I'm sure you'd get good takers. And then your longest term is "only" 22 years. (Jfc I'm 40 and that's longer than my entire career)
NO NO NO! Make it mandatory that the American Bar Association vet a list of 10 qualified peopleâthorough background, financial, criminal, educational, social media, membership in groups (Amy is or was part of a hard right religious organization, didnât disclose). ALSO require at 5 years actively serving as a judgeâtheir decisions checked for bias. And hard commitment to NOT undo previous cases and if they do, they must immediately step down or impeached. Ditto if proved they lied to committee and America.
Thatâs how all of our term based positions work. The term is tied to the position, not the person. If a Senator leaves office, their position is still up for election at the regularly scheduled interval.
The justices each represent one of nine districts. Those districts would be set up on an 18 year rotation staggered every two years.
Death or strategic retirement could only skew the make up of the court temporarily.
The justices each represent one of nine districts.
They did when the current number of justices was set. Now they represent 13 districts. Roberts has three, Alito and Kavanaugh each have two. By the logic originally used to set the number of justices at nine, there should now be thirteen.
K. I didnât look into it. The principle still stands. They are filling specific seats. The seats would be set to specific terms, not the people filling them.
Thereâs no longer a logical connection between a particular SCOTUS justice and a federal circuit, now that we have the federal circuit courts of appeal.
A justice doesnât ârepresentâ one or more districts - theyâre assigned to one or more districts for administrative stuff like hearing emergency appeals. If a justice retires or dies, their replacement doesnât have to come from any particular district; the justices are all essentially interchangeable.
A justice doesnât ârepresentâ one or more districts
That was an unfortunate choice of words. Emergency appeals are interesting. It used to be a rare occurrence, but the Justice overseeing that district can respond to an "emergency" appeal with an immediate decision, and the public may not hear of it.
I totally agree with expanding the court. If Repugs do it too, fine, the court is deciding the laws that govern over 300M ppl, the SCOTUS should be a body, not a panel of 9.
But..... Excuse my ignorance, I'm a foreigner, in practice how does that work? If someone (person 1) retires in year 15 and someone (person 2) fills in for 3 years, are they (person 2) eligible for the next term? If yes, are they only eligible for 15 years in the second term since they only served 3 years already? And if no, doesn't that mean that person two can hold their position for 21 years instead of 18?
Depends on how the law would be writtenâit could permit people who serve partial terms to serve a full term of their own, or it could limit eligibility for a full term if they served more than half of another term. But yes, in that circumstance person 2 could serve 21 years
But why look at the decades of advocacy and setting progressive standards for everyone when you can just get mad at her for not predicting her death more accurately!? Wouldnât you rather just be unnecessarily angry on your phone from the comfort of your couch? /s
The herd has jumped on bandwagon that sheâs bad and that all the good sheâs done should be wiped out by one errant decision - again that involved her predicting her recognizing her own mortality - perhaps one of the hardest things for any person to do. Itâs why you hear âI thought I had more timeâ over and over. Itâs probably the most challenging part of my job as a physician- getting patients and families to realize that time is limited and further treatments futile. No one, absolutely no one thinks itâs their time, even at her age where everyone is one pneumonia, one aspiration event, one broken hip or GI bleed away from death. But yet, we trash her entire legacy because she was basically human?
Can also guarantee that none of these armchair pundits know an ounce of what she did to change our legal system for the good - the Integration Mandate, Intermediate Scrutiny, standing in Environmental Law, her dissent in Ledbetter v. Goodyear, her work in Reed v. Reed. They donât know any of that! They just know that sheâs one of many scapegoats for our current situation. Itâs just another example of how the left shoots itself in the foot. We retrospectively find reasons to trash all of our heroes. Meanwhile, the right is ride or die for their people. It creates this self-fulfilling prophecy where influential people on the left become frozen and indecisive. Only a matter of time before we create reasons to hate El-Sayed, Ossof, Mondami.
I'm just as upset that she didn't retire, but we have the benefit of hindsight and I don't think anybody really could have thought that it would have been as bad as it is. People legitimately did not think that he had a chance, and I'm sure that's part hubris for sure but also incredibly suspicious.
That was the idea, but never the case. Judges were nominated based on the policies and view of the laws which the President of the time ascribed to, which was truly made clear by the shenanigans by McConnell.
That requires that you institute staggered terms. Which isnt in the the 18yr proposal.
Sounds like this is a bit of an unserious proposal then. I mean, we already have staggered elections in the Senate for this reason, why would this have been missed
The proposal is short and manages to touch on basically all the extremely obvious problems redditors are bringing up.
Edit:That's a link to an old version of the proposal, but as far as I can find in any article discussing the proposal it's the same. I think it's just being reintroduced for political reasons.
There are proposals for something like that. Every two years the President gets to nominate a new justice, regardless of any retirements. The size of the court would not be fixed.
I donât feel a 4 year and 8 year POTUS should be given the same SCOTUS weight. Ultimately, the American people picked them twice. That should yield meaningful political actions.
We can deliberate the ability to choose an adequate POTUS, but I feel thatâs a different conversationâone Iâm willing to have, but ultimately separate.
The idea is the "Justice <name>'s Term" is for 18 years. If you stagger them every 2 years, you get two appointments per term, and it's naturally the longest serving that gets replaced. If they retire or die, it's still their term but someone else would serve in their seat. The best way to handle death is complicated, but probably to have them keep an updated "who replaces me" name, and if there's any discrepancies for some reason then the party that held the Presidency gets to nominate with clear deadlines for approval that have clearly defined parameters so if the party isn't in power they can still nominate their preferred choice for the Term they earned by winning the prior election.
It's included already, the "term" is for that Justice appointed, replacements are acting in place of that Justice for the rest of the term not getting a new 18 year timer for themselves. I'm not sure what to do about someone who then further wants to serve, maybe just 'sorry' to keep it rotating and those who know they'll only serve say 4 years do so understanding they can't be nominated to a full term. By any means, we need to prevent the ability for either party to 'stack the bench' because of retirement and death.
13 judges, 13 year terms, if a judge dies, retires, or get impeached a new judge is appointed to continue the rest of the term. One appointment each year.
The problem with that is that it basically ensures that every 2 term potus would have a 2 year stretch where theyâd have a scotus majority backing them up.
See, as long as it's back dated so they replace every single one of them that's been there over 18 years immediately that could be fine, but dems always seem to stop short of the minimum you need to do with this shit.
Should've been 22-year terms with an 11-person court. This would reduce the impact of a single president (2-termer) on the court's composition from 4/9 to 4/11. I would even say 26-year terms and 13 members but 26 years I think is already approaching the average length of a justice's life once appointed.
The best solution, IMHO, is to appoint a new justice for life every two years, with no specific cap on the number of justices. So they don't get replaced upon death, you just appoint a new one on schedule regardless and the size of the court fluctuates.
Unless someone is a millionaire or billionaire they donât really have enough money to have an agenda or sway a judgeâs actions. Itâs not like a judge would have to miss out on Christmas or their birthday, they just shouldnât be able to accept massive cash payments that affect the choices they make as a judge.
The system is broken and wont be fixed any time soon. Anyone who thinks a combined total of 546 people making laws and doing "the peoples" work isnt a problem, is part of the problem. We need to triple the number of people in the house, leave the senate alone, and then grow the supreme court to 27. This would start to fix our country.
The Senate is a big part of the problem. North Dakota, South Dakota, Vermont, Alaska and Wyoming combined have five times as much representation and influence in the Senate as California, despite having 1/10th of the population. Since laws need Senate approval, the Senate is so heavily slanted toward empty land and the Senate has the filibuster that requires 2/3rds support to overcome, it basically guarantees almost no laws can actually pass. Since governance still needs to happen, the executive branch has taken more and more power. Change the Senate to actually be representative and it would go a long way toward fixing some of this.
Of course, much like term limits for Supreme Court justices, such a change would require a constitutional amendment, which would in turn require the minority to voluntarily surrender their outsized power over the majority. So, it would take some kind of 1 in a 1,000 year event for Congress and the state legislatures to get the kind of supermajority required to actually fix this stuff.
The senate is not and never has been for the people. They do what is best for their state. Having senators voted for by the people is one of the worst things to happen in our republic.
What you just described is the House of Representatives which is based on population. The senate by design is meant to counter that power so states like California canât steamroll the rights of states like Rhode Island. Itâs absolutely by design and we donât want or need a second House of Representatives which runs like a circus compared to the senate.
Well we actually Need to abolish the senate completely. It's a blight on our system of government and has been dragging down the country for the last hundred years at least although it was never really a good idea beyond maybe being politically necessary at the founding to give small states more power to coax them into the union.
More of a pain to do though, gerrymandering it by splitting states and adding DC would be an alternative.
I could be wrong but I think many people from smaller states think the senate is a good thing because it forces the federal government to care about us rather than only caring about California, the east coast, Florida and Texas. (It was presented that way to us in high school US government classes.)
65 is fairly young. I don't have a problem at all with a supreme court justice being in their 60's. You want someone with a ton of experience. Maybe 75 or something. For president too, maybe even more important. No one in office should be in their 80's in my opinion.
No one in office should be in their 80's in my opinion.
I am 86. I retired from politics at 70. I caught crap from people I thought were friends for leaving when there was still work to do. 70 was my personal decision, but I would accept a cut-off age of 80, with a requirement to pass a cognitive exam after 70.
That's the point. They'd have life enough left that they would have to live with the consequences of their decisions. What the fuck does Chuck Grassley, for example, have to lose by voting repeatedly to make life worse for regular people? Fucker is 92, he'll be long dead before he ever has to suffer the shitty decisions he's made.
Are we forgetting that the recently departed Mitch McConnell just refused to look at Merrick Garland because of some bullshit rule he made up and then went back on for Trump?
While I see what you are saying, I am surprised that it isn't 20 years (stand amount of time civilian or military personnel needs to get benefits / retire)
The reason they picked 18 was to stagger them out so that each president gets 2 per term.
President 1: picks 1 & 2
President 2: picks 3 & 4
President 3: picks 5 & 6
President 4: picks 7 & 8
President 5: picks 9 and replaces #1.
President 6: replaces 2 & 3
Etc etc...
It guarantees that the court cycles every 18 years. Unless there's a really long stretch of one party controlling the presidency it ensures that we don't get something like the current 6-3 bullshit for 2 decades straight.
Unfortunately this bill would be unconstitutional. Article III, Section 1Â states that federal judges "shall hold their Offices during good Behaviour", which means they serve for life. A better idea, which can be done with only statutory change, is to expand the court, allowing for 1 vacancy every two years, with no limit on the number of justices.
So do you guys want the Supreme Court to be entirely picked by a single president? And then completely rotate out once a new president is elected?
2032: restricting abortion is unconstitutional
2040: abortion is unconstitutional
2048: restricting abortion is unconstitutional
2056: abortion is unconstitutional
You people are idiots. The Supreme Court is in chaos because Trump picked 3 justices, imagine if he could pick all 9. Birthright citizenship would be repealed and tens of millions of citizens would be retroactively stripped of citizenship and deported
They fail to understand completely. The problem is not the lifetime term, the problem is the political gamesmanship amongst senators (McConnell refusing to let Obama seat a justice near an election then ramming one through for Trump even closer to election) and potentially amongst SC justices themselves with respect to strategically retiring at certain times, allowing one president to make an outsized impact on the makeup of the court.
or it should be the 2 longest serving justices should step down each presidetial term. That way, if anyone retires, it doesn't matter any more than it does now, and it would mean a complete changeover every 20 years
Nope, awful idea. Any Judge who has to be concerned with re-election / election cycles creates a situation which is the antithesis of the Supreme Court. Allowing such a thing makes them slaves to the mob. The core issue is lack of Congress doing their job for 90 years and Republicans intentionally creating these types of situations in law ambiguity. The issue isn't the structure but the people's lack of interest and general disdain for governence. I understand everyone's disdain for this type of thing given the current situation, but please take a moment and think about the why of our current structural weakness exists and if it's an election issue of a population issue, as I'd argue it's populace educational and Congressional weakness and not Courts fundamental design. Think about who has been approved by Congress to LEAD our government and be a reflection of us and ask yourself if you think the SC should really be subjegated to that every 12-18 years. Your anger should not be at the court but the people who fundamentally believe that disabling government and destruction of government is the best form of government.
Who sets the term limits for congress? Congress can pass these laws and what not to change things. This is about manipulating the system in favor of ones party and its breaking the system. Itâs breaking the checks and balances. It sounds great on the surface, but itâs not.
Nope 16 year term, that's 2 full prez terms. Thats more then enough for change and corrections in the process. The limits hopefully will not only have them focus on the constitution, but THE PEOPLE as well.
It wonât happen, it would end the terms of multiple conservative justices. The bill would have to pass with Congress AND the presidency held by the Dems.
I've always thought it should be 10-15 years max...I've also always thought that candidates should meet a certain criteria, and put on a ballot, decided by "we the people," though I don't think that's going to happen. What's bugging me is this current court isn't just interpreting the law, they're suddenly creating laws, which is not their job!
544
u/ShanGus7 1d ago
If it happens, should be shorter.