Three Democratic Representatives will introduce a bill Tuesday that would limit the terms justices serve on the Supreme Court to 18 years in an effort to make the appointment of justices less political, Reuters reports.
The proposed legislation would provide for each president to appoint two justices for each term served, thereby having the court better reflect the population and eliminate the potential for one president to pack the court due to coincidental deaths and retirements.
“It would save the country a lot of agony and help lower the temperature over fights for the court that go to the fault lines of cultural issues and is one of the primary things tearing at our social fabric,” said California Representative Ro Khanna is co-sponsoring the legislation with Representatives Joe Kennedy III of Massachusetts and Don Beyer of Virginia.
Justices have served an average of 25 years in the last half century, significantly longer than justices in the 19th and early 20th Century, primarily because of longer average lifespans in the United States.
Lifetime appointments have spurred the appointment, primarily by repubicans, for younger and less experienced judges who are chosen for their political ideology, not for their jurisprudence or their legal resume.
Term limits for justices would encourage nominations of people with significant judicial experience, who would then rotate back to a lower court when their terms expire.
While term limits for judges in general and Supreme Court justices in particular are widely supported by the populace, as shown in polls, term limits may not be something that can be established through legislation. It may require a Constitutional Amendment.