When the founders of the early American republic designed the Constitution, they envisioned a powerful judiciary separated from the influences of the legislative and executive branches. To try to reach that goal, the United States offers lifetime appointments to its federal Supreme Court justices.
In recent decades, however, Americans have raised a variety of arguments against these lifelong appointments. In 2024, 68% of Americans now say that they support term limits for Supreme Court justices, and the United States is the only advanced democracy in the world that still offers lifelong appointments to its senior-most federal justices.
Watch the above video as Straight Arrow News contributor Dr. Rashad Richey argues in favor of implementing term limits for United States Supreme Court justices and for U.S. politicians at all levels of government.
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The following is an excerpt of the above video:
You see, if you have someone in for a limited amount of time, more likely, they’re going to try to utilize that time in order to get stuff done, protect their legacy, honor their word, remember their commitment.
But when someone has been there forever, when someone has been there 10, 20, 30 years, they know it’s going to be very difficult to ever lose in a primary or a general election. They get reelected by name recognition alone. And they stop serving the community. They start serving special interests, they start serving their corporate friends, they start serving the leader of this, and the committee chairman of that, rather than you.
And the only way to destroy that kind of system is to have term limits. I think it is time to also have the conversation of term limits as it relates to the U.S. Supreme Court. You see, if they did it the way let’s say the FBI director is done, which is basically a 10-year term, which means they still can be fired, the Supreme Court would not have that same element, 10 years, but they can be reaffirmed every 10 years. How would that help?
That means the decisions would not be so political. Because if they make a decision today, because they favor a particular, let’s say, president, they don’t know who will be president 10 years from that day, which means they may be more willing to make decisions based on congruence to law, rather than to their political ideology.