Term limits: the idea behind the supreme court’s lifetime placement was meant to separate them from the immediate political atmosphere of any given election season (imagine the entire bench being Alito’s and Thomases while Trump was in office). While it’s obvious now that it backfired by instead ingraining one over-powered president’s bullshit for way longer than anyone wants, I’m not sure if I agree that term limits is a “good” solution if we want to keep that intended level of separation. Maybe moving the judiciary to a self-contained governing system similar to the military that doesn’t require allocation from either congress or the president, where a lawyer can become a judge can be appointed to the circuit court, etc, but congress could still oversee the ascension process with their own ethics comitee?
If we replace a scotus judge every 2 years, they would individually have 18 year terms.
If we assume they’re experienced enough to actually be on the SC, they’ll be pretty close to retirement age anyhow. (If they’re 40, and that’s young, they’ll be 58 when they’re done.)
This doesn’t really change the slow nature of the court. What it does, is to remove unpredictable nature of appointments. Right now, we have a hyper conservative judge because McConnel played games and certain judges died at very inconvenient times. A consequence there is a SCOTUS that doesn’t reflect America at large.
Ethics standard: yes, absolutely
Term limits: the idea behind the supreme court’s lifetime placement was meant to separate them from the immediate political atmosphere of any given election season (imagine the entire bench being Alito’s and Thomases while Trump was in office). While it’s obvious now that it backfired by instead ingraining one over-powered president’s bullshit for way longer than anyone wants, I’m not sure if I agree that term limits is a “good” solution if we want to keep that intended level of separation. Maybe moving the judiciary to a self-contained governing system similar to the military that doesn’t require allocation from either congress or the president, where a lawyer can become a judge can be appointed to the circuit court, etc, but congress could still oversee the ascension process with their own ethics comitee?
Tie Dye Robes: this is highest priority
If we replace a scotus judge every 2 years, they would individually have 18 year terms.
If we assume they’re experienced enough to actually be on the SC, they’ll be pretty close to retirement age anyhow. (If they’re 40, and that’s young, they’ll be 58 when they’re done.)
This doesn’t really change the slow nature of the court. What it does, is to remove unpredictable nature of appointments. Right now, we have a hyper conservative judge because McConnel played games and certain judges died at very inconvenient times. A consequence there is a SCOTUS that doesn’t reflect America at large.