Posted on by Californiacontrarian

Supreme Court; Should It Be Like Roulette?

As it stands now the makeup of the Supreme Court is pure luck, just like roulette. At present, the past three presidents, Barack Obama, George W.Bush, and Bill Clinton, have each nominated two and President Trump is on the verge of nominating his second Justice. This recent equality as far as presidential Supreme Court nominees, however is pure happenstance.
Here we are in the middle of another mudslinging, downright disgusting process of the approval of a Supreme Court Justice. Why is this process so nasty? Why do some senators go out of their way to insult and belittle the nominee? Why do some even go so far as to insult the religious faith of the nominee? Is this just politics as usual? Of course the thinly veiled attacks on the nominee’s reputation do play well with the senator’s base, but is that all that is behind it? No, obviously not, as the nomination and the subsequent vote to accept the nominee has dramatic effects for decades to come because the appointment to Supreme Court is a lifetime appointment. Other than judges are there any other lifetime positions? If there are please let me know. Other than retiring like Justice Kennedy recently did, the Supreme Court is a lifetime position, and so the political stakes are exceptionally high . . . perhaps too high!
Why does this have to be a lifetime appointment? The answer is that’s what’s in the Constitution. That’s what the designers figured would keep the justices free from political pressures for if they didn’t have to worry about their future, they would more likely be fair and just in their decisions. But that was then and this is now! There is one major difference between the 1770s and 2018. Life expectancy! In the latter part of the 18th century, the average life expectancy was 36 years, and in the early 1800s it rose to 37 years. That is far cry from today’s life expectancy. In 2007, the average life expectancy at birth for persons born in the United States was 77.9 years, an increase of 1.1 years from 2000 and an increase of 0.2 years from 2006, and by 2050 the average life expectancy is predicted to increase to 80 for men, and 83-85 for women.

In 1790 the average age of a Supreme Court Justice at retirement was about 62 years, whereas in 2010 it was about 77 years. Call me crazy, but I doubt that this is what the framers of the Constitution envisioned.
Personally, I think that Kennedy’s decision to retire was the right decision. After all he was 81 years old! Since there is no mandatory retirement age, there have been
justices that did not retire till 90! Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg is now 85 years old – four years than older Kennedy, and five years past the average retirement age.
Personally, if I have a case going before the highest court in the land, I do not want a bunch of octogenarians deciding it, and that is why I am recommending the following “rotating mandatory retirement” for Supreme Court justices. I propose that one year and three years after each presidential election, the justice that has been on the Court the longest would be forced to retire.Since there are nine Supreme Court justices, each would serve as a Supreme Court Justice for an average of 18 years, and I think that is plenty long.
Let’s use Justice Ginsberg as an example. She took her seat on the Supreme Court in August 1993 after a nomination from Bill Clinton, and her present the tenure is three years shorter than the average tenure. With my plan, she would have retired in 2011, and Justice Kennedy who was appointed in 1987 would have retired in 2005.
There are two caveats to this plan. No single president could appoint more than three justices. If a president was elected for two terms (8 years in office), he would appoint only three justices – one at the end of the first and third year of his first term, and one at the end of his third year of his second term. Likewise if a justice died, the president would then have to nominate a new justice, even though it was not on the usual two year-four year cycle, but again each president could only nominate a total of three justices maximum. The bickering about Justice Scalia’s replacement would have been avoided since according to this plan, then President Obama would have already nominated his three justices, and so he would have maxed out.This plan would also avoid picking Supreme Court nominees based on age, as all would serve 18 years.  Before his decision, President Trump’s three leading potential nominees were all around 50, and so they could realistically serve for approximately 30 years as a Supreme Court Justice. That’s too long!

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