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.
18 years is the correct length. It’ the shortest term that prevents a single 2-term President from being able to replace the majority of the Court.
I think there is a better way. Assuming that the USA is broken up into major regions, each with their own judiciary and executive, they can send some justices to represent them on the national stage. The president of a region also picks a justice when their term begins, and that justice has a term of up to 5 years or until the next president picks their own justice. When the new executive justice is picked, their predecessor is removed from office. The judiciary and congressional justices have 10 year terms.
This prevents executive justices lasting longer than 10 years, likely 5 if a president sucks. Meanwhile, the judicial and congressional justices last 10 years by default, making them more influential than the executive.
That changes judges into representatives and completely defeats the entire purpose of the judicial branch and removes judicial independence.
It also changes the country into a confederation. We tried that in 1776 and it didn’t work AT ALL, and then part of the country tried it again in the 1860s, and it lead to a war that resulted in more US deaths than all other US wars combined.
Elsewhere in the thread, I mentioned other things. Specifically, each judicial branch selects 2 justices without any interference from the executive and congressional branches. The congresses get to choose two of their own, and the executive has one justice, that is retired when a new president selects a different justice. Assuming we have four regions, that would be 20 justices on the national court.
In any case, the United States are already broken. We got an single executive branch that is in the process of kinging itself, a single congress that has abdicated responsibility, and a single judiciary without teeth nor independence.
To my mind, having regions would check and balance things, because there would be competition between them to be top dog within the overall nation.
Yes, but if each district has an executive that can also fire judges it still removes any independence from the judicial branch - completely negating its purpose.
The judicial branhlch’s primary function at a national scale is to protect against the tyranny of the majority, and they can only achieve that if they are not subject to the wrath of elected officials who are upset with rulings they make after appointment.