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.
Good point about people resigning early. That would probably be a problem no matter what. If someone was at 16 years, they would probably be incentivized to retire early if they thought the next president wouldn’t be from their party.
Right now, judges almost never resign, so they just happen to die whenever most of the time, which allows conservatives to replace liberal judges and vice versa (in theory). Resigning early would likely be a huge problem.
Might have to do something like say each president gets to nominate a maximum of 2 justices. Those two justices being the people with the longest tenure on the court. If someone dies, that counts as nomination. If the president has already used their 2 nominations, then the next president will appoint a replacement.
Just have the President fill the remainder of the term, not a fresh 18 years. So if a bunch of mouth breathers want to retire early that seat doesn’t change regardless.
Like how trump extorted one judge into retiring so he got Kavanaugh’s seat?