Recent polling released by NBC News shows that only 22% of Americans have confidence in the U.S. Supreme Court. In the wake of that growing unpopularity, a new proposal in Congress would amend the Constitution to impose 18-year term limits on Supreme Court justices. Democratic Rep. Johnny Olszewski of Maryland joins "The Takeout" to discuss.
But why? Like, what’s the reasoning of 10 years rather than 12 or 6 or 24? It seems like we’re trying to apply a magic number to a policy problem. If the SCOTUS judges come to the same rules with different term limits, are we going to come back here and say we need to fiddle with the magic number some more?
I think one of the upshots of lifetime term limits has been younger and younger bench appointees. Roberts was 50 when he took the job.
Well, there’s the damned thing. Not great that it has zero co-sponsors. But I guess people are talking about it, which is nice.
Ah, I see he’s got balls enough to put the right kind of language in there. Wish he could rally some other reps behind this idea before he launched it.
In support of 18 it’s terms staggered every two years with the current 9 justices, so each president gets two. Personally I’d hope after year 1 and year 3, so as to avoid any tomfoolery of immediately taking office and installing a troublemaker.
Not quite sure how I’d handle it if we get to 13 Justices like we’ll need to.
It’s crazy that we have 12 regional circuits and only nine judges to oversee them. But imagine how many people would freak out at the number 13 if we had that many judges