Question

Do you support the current life appointment system or do you think justices should be forced to retire? Why?

Answer 1

Answer:

“I do think that if there were a long term—I don’t know, 18, 20 years, something like that, and it was fixed—I would say that was fine. In fact, it’d make my life a lot simpler, to tell you the truth.” – Justice Stephen Breyer1

“The Framers adopted life tenure at a time when people simply did not live as long as they do now. A judge insulated from the normal currents of life for twenty-five or thirty years was a rarity then, but is becoming commonplace today. Setting a term of, say, fifteen years would ensure that federal judges would not lose all touch with reality through decades of ivory tower existence. It would also provide a more regular and greater degree of turnover among the judges. Both developments would, in my view, be healthy ones.” – Future Chief Justice John Roberts2

The rules governing the U.S. Supreme Court must be updated to reflect the reality of life in modern America. The average tenure of a Supreme Court justice has significantly lengthened since the establishment of the federal judiciary in the 1700s, giving outsize power to nine individuals in a way the framers of the Constitution could never have imagined. This longevity has resulted in a lack of regularity in vacancies, introducing further randomness to the judicial selection process. As a result, the confirmation process for the highest court has become politically divisive, with extremely narrow votes and theatrics from the nominees themselves. This state of affairs is untenable; policymakers must address it by enacting legislation to create term limits for justices.