{"id":89943,"date":"2020-10-25T07:06:44","date_gmt":"2020-10-25T12:06:44","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/PERSIAN-HERITAGE.COM\/?p=89943"},"modified":"2020-10-25T07:06:44","modified_gmt":"2020-10-25T12:06:44","slug":"auto-draft-281","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/PERSIAN-HERITAGE.COM\/en\/2020\/10\/25\/auto-draft-281\/","title":{"rendered":"Once Appointed, US Supreme Court Justices Have a Job for Life, But Should They?"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"VOA \u2014 U.S. Supreme Court justices have a job for life once they\u2019re nominated by the president and confirmed by the Senate. But a majority of Americans would like to see that change, according to a court reform report<\/a> prepared by researchers at Washington\u00a0University\u00a0in St. Louis and\u00a0Pennsylvania State University.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n

The recent confirmation battle over Judge Amy Coney Barrett, President Donald Trump\u2019s pick to replace\u00a0the\u00a0late\u00a0Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg on the U.S. Supreme Court before Election Day, has reignited talk of reforming the high court.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n

Some liberal Democrats have floated the idea of expanding the court<\/a>. The survey, taken in July before\u00a0Ginsburg\u2019s death, finds that fewer than one-third of Americans favor expanding the U.S. Supreme Court, but a majority \u2014 60% \u2014 does support setting term limits.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cDo I think that’s worth contemplating?\u00a0I guess I\u00a0do, in part because when the Constitution was drafted in 1789, people had an average life\u00a0span of about what\u00a0\u2014\u00a040, 45 years?\u201d says Nicole\u00a0Huberfeld, professor of law at Boston University.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cAnd\u00a0so,\u00a0a lifetime appointment was not\u00a0as long as\u00a0it is now, where our average life\u00a0span is 78, 80 years. And people are getting appointed, in the last several rounds of appointments, in their late 40s. I\u00a0don’t\u00a0think anyone really contemplated that the justices would serve these 30- or 40-year terms on the Supreme Court,\u201d\u00a0Huberfeld adds.<\/p>\n

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U.S. Supreme Court nominee Judge Amy Coney Barrett testifies on the third day of her U.S. Senate Judiciary Committee confirmation hearing on Capitol Hill in Washington, Oct. 14, 2020.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

In a 2017 letter to Congress, 21\u00a0constitutional scholars from universities such as Harvard, Duke,\u00a0Columbia\u00a0and the University of Michigan called for limiting the terms of Supreme Court justices to 18 years.\u00a0Once their term ends, the justices could continue to serve on a lower court, if they chose, or fill in on the Supreme Court\u00a0in the event of\u00a0a death or unexpected vacancy.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n

Fix the Court<\/a>, a self-described nonpartisan group that advocates for court reform,\u00a0favors the plan,\u00a0which would allow each president to nominate a justice in the first and third years of his or her term.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cHaving a regularized appointment process would actually lower the temperature of each appointment and make partisans say to themselves,\u00a0\u2018OK, I don’t like this guy,\u00a0but in two years, maybe my\u00a0guy or gal in two years, maybe my\u00a0guy’s going to be nominated,\u2019\u201d says Gabe Roth of Fix the Court. \u201cSo,\u00a0instead of always throwing everything you have in a specific nominee, you know that there’s going to be a chance to get a nominee that you may like more in just two years.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n

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\"FILE<\/div>\n<\/figure>\n<\/div>
FILE – Justices of the U.S. Supreme Court gather for a group portrait, Nov. 30, 2018.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Some legal experts believe reforms are necessary in part because the Supreme Court has amassed too much power.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cMaybe a crisis will cause Americans to really reconsider: Why do we give the courts so much power?\u201d Daniel Epps, a law professor at Washington University,\u00a0who clerked for Justice Anthony Kennedy, told Politico<\/a> recently.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cNothing important should turn on whether some old person chooses to retire or keep working until they\u2019re in their 90s,\u201d\u00a0he\u00a0added. \u201cIt\u2019s a crazy way to run a country.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cIn the last 20 years, instead of the political branches deciding\u00a0who’s\u00a0won a presidential election,\u00a0whether or not\u00a0there’s\u00a0a death penalty, how environmental regulations are construed, how health care laws are construed, how religion is practiced in the public sphere, and on and on,\u00a0all\u00a0those decisions are being made by the Supreme Court and not our elected officials,” Roth\u00a0says.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cI think that having a limit on the judicial tenure will reduce each justice\u2019s individual power and reduce the judiciary power as a whole over time,\u201d he adds.\u00a0<\/p>\n

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\"From<\/div>\n<\/figure>\n<\/div>
From left, Associate Justices Sonia Sotomayor, Samuel Alito, Ruth Bader Ginsburg and Chief Justice John Roberts stand before the casket of the late Supreme Court Justice John Paul Stevens at the Supreme Court, July 22, 2019.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

While she does think term limits for justices is worth looking into, Huberfeld, of Boston University, is not convinced the high court has too much power over Americans.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cIt is the job of the court to interpret the Constitution and the laws made thereunder. That is what the court is designed to do.\u00a0I\u00a0actually think\u00a0the dynamic\u00a0is something slightly different, which is that people are using the court as a tool to fight legislation they disagree with by\u00a0coming up with\u00a0novel theories that are pushed in lower federal courts in front of sympathetic lower federal court judges,\u201d\u00a0Huberfeld\u00a0says. \u201cI think it’s more a matter of litigation strategy and the money that gets poured into litigation strategy than it says about the Supreme Court.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n

The court reform report found that 47% of respondents believe it should take a super-majority of the Supreme Court \u2014 at least seven of the nine justices \u2014 to\u00a0be in agreement\u00a0before declaring any law passed by Congress unconstitutional.\u00a0<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

VOA \u2014 U.S. Supreme Court justices have a job for life once they\u2019re nominated by the president and confirmed by the Senate. But a majority of Americans would like to see that change, according to a court reform report prepared by researchers at Washington\u00a0University\u00a0in St. Louis and\u00a0Pennsylvania State University.\u00a0\u00a0 The recent confirmation battle over Judge […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":89944,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":"","_links_to":"","_links_to_target":""},"categories":[10],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-89943","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-latests"],"translation":{"provider":"WPGlobus","version":"3.0.2","language":"en","enabled_languages":["fa","en"],"languages":{"fa":{"title":true,"content":false,"excerpt":false},"en":{"title":true,"content":true,"excerpt":false}}},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/PERSIAN-HERITAGE.COM\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/89943","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/PERSIAN-HERITAGE.COM\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/PERSIAN-HERITAGE.COM\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/PERSIAN-HERITAGE.COM\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/PERSIAN-HERITAGE.COM\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=89943"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/PERSIAN-HERITAGE.COM\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/89943\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":89946,"href":"https:\/\/PERSIAN-HERITAGE.COM\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/89943\/revisions\/89946"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/PERSIAN-HERITAGE.COM\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/89944"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/PERSIAN-HERITAGE.COM\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=89943"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/PERSIAN-HERITAGE.COM\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=89943"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/PERSIAN-HERITAGE.COM\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=89943"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}