Should members of the Supreme Court be given term limits?

I think a limit of 20 years is an excellent idea.

No. Given that the entire nomination and approval process has become so politicized, the process of choosing and anointing new justices every ‘n’ years – even if ‘n’ is 15 or 20 – seems like asking for trouble.

I, for one, feel that the politicization of the Court has made them untrustworthy and irrelevant. Yes, the Court has lots of power, but they don’t have the legitimacy, and they don’t deserve the respect, that they did 40 years ago.

Yes, I think they should.

I’ve tottered back and forth on this one. From what I can see, even the most right or left wing justices often rule in ways you wouldn’t expect them to. Conservative justices ruling positively on mainly left wing cases and Leftist justices ruling in support of mainly conservative cases.

I think a lot of the politicization comes from the media and activist groups on either side. I have no real problem with lifetime appointments, but do believe there ought to be something pointing towards health and cognitive abilities thrown into it. RBG was a strong member of the court for 27 years. However the last couple showed her behaving a bit erratically. Falling asleep during Obama’s SOTU address was an example of what I mean. She claims to have imbibed too much wine, but to me, that doesn’t make it any better…it actually makes it worse.

I also am a strong proponent of some way to look at ethics issues within the court, other than having a very partisan other branch of the government doing it.

@elbanditoroso , Doesn’t the current system promote politicization? Trump appointed 3 justices, which has had and will continue to have a major impact. Term limits would reduce the impact that a single president can have.

I think Term Limits would exacerbate the politicization of the Court. It would result in almost continual political battles in the Senate.

To solve the current problems, though, an easier impeachment process and a strict ethics guideline would allow the Senate to remove some judges. Gorsuch and Thomas would be out, and Scalia would have been reined in or booted.

Yes. I also would like Supreme Court Justices be elected.

@RedDeerGuy1 , I think elections for the justices would introduce a lot of politicization. At least in theory, the justices are only supposed to be guided by constitutional law, but if they ran for election they would be forced to pander to the public.

@LostInParadise Ok. What about being appointed by the House or Senate. Not just the President, or Prime Minister. I’m thinking of Canada, but can apply to The United States. The House and the Senate would have the power to remove a Supreme Court Justice.

I’d vote No on that.

I would support term limits for the court. Originally, the idea was to keep the Justices above politics.
That didn’t work.

No.

A resounding yes!

I go back and forth. Probably no.

Another option is aging out. Forced retirement at age 70.

I like Hawaii Jake’s idea of 20 years.

Everyone loved RBG but if she retired (voluntarily or not) early enough in Obama’s administration, he could have chosen someone to his liking. Instead, she stayed on until the very end, and it was too late and it became a Trump-era appointment. The way the system is now, a President chooses someone young and they’re in there 40 or 50 years, even to the point where they’re no longer “with it” mentally. I’m not saying RBG wasn’t with it mentally, but that is a possibility with someone being a Justice until they die.

Well I think it really depends. What should be looked at is money. If a judge is repeatly getting money or favors and not reporting it than they should be fired. For lowly government jobs you can’t receive cash or expensive gift or favors that cost someone money without being fired. And yet it seems Judges can receive and even Trump while president, expensive gifts, and absolutely nothing was done. Thomas never reported some of the expensive favors or gifts and he’s still sitting on the bench. He’s a corrupt individual. My problem isn’t so much how they vote so long as they vote according to the laws and follow the constitution, but the idea that they can be on the take is what really pisses me off.
There should be no judge who can sit on a bench if he lies about money and favors. If a person lies to cover it up, its because they know that money came with conditions.

It’s awfully easy to be swayed to rule one way or another on an issue – not only by financial incentives, but also by your own beliefs. I used to believe they could put aside their feelings… now, I don’t think so. I used to believe they were fine, upstanding people who put the best interest of the most Americans first. I don’t think that anymore, not after Roe v. Wade. And I didn’t think religious beliefs came into play, now I think they do.

Another bubble burst.

@smudges Religion doesn’t play into it really. It’s about controlling people. But money is what controls the controllers. The rich throw money at people in high positions, like Justices. You throw pocket money their way and they can’t bend fast enough. Not saying religion doesn’t play a role, however, Religious leaders control their flock to vote a certain way and religious leaders are swayed by money and power. None of these A-holes have a real belief system. If they did, they would live an honest life. I always believed Anita Hill, not Thomas, and the more I hear about what a snake he is, I’m convinced he doesn’t have a religious bone in his body.
As for Roe V Wade, didn’t they just say that it was up to the States to decide? They just took a cowardly position on it.

@Pandora I don’t believe it is even about controlling people. That’s what Congress does. The SCOTUS just interprets the laws. Sometimes their rulings change how laws are viewed, that is correct.

As for Roe v Wade, the ruling was pretty much what was expected when RvW was first decided. The irony of the whole thing is that most people that scream about how they don’t want the government in their bedroom are upset when the government says they don’t belong in your bedroom.

@seawulf575 “The irony of the whole thing is that most people that scream about how they don’t want the government in their bedroom are upset when the government says they don’t belong in your bedroom.”

Sorry, I’m not following the logic here? It sounds like you’re saying people on the left who are advocating for the libertarian principle of the government not interfering with people’s ability to love and marry and engage in intimate acts without the government, who also believe the government shouldn’t intervene between a woman and her doctor are somehow upset when government isn’t in the bedroom?

@gorillapaws When RvW went in front of the SCOTUS again, there were many protesters that were upset because they didn’t want “the government in their bedrooms”. They didn’t feel the SCOTUS should be ruling on the case. But RvW WAS the government getting into their bedrooms. The SCOTUS just took the federal government out of the equation, which is what was expected from the time of the original decision.

@seawulf575 Oh, I get it. You’re asserting that the federal government via SCOTUS saying that women have the constitutional right to govern their bodies and that no state government can pass laws to the contrary IS the “the government getting into their bedrooms.” So by that logic the First Amendment’s establishment clause is “getting into people’s places of worship” by stating that the government can’t establish religion?

No position in any organization shouldn’t have term limits…

No.

@gorillapaws Not at all. And your analogy is weak at best. Show me in the Constitution where it says anything about abortion being a right. It isn’t there. Religion is listed as an enumerated right…it is specified in the Constitution. The SCOTUS often rules on unenumerated rights…rights that are not spelled out. And part of that is determining where the oversight of those rights falls. The federal government is endowed (by the Constitution) with very limited powers. Oftentimes those unenumerated rights need to have a decision as to whether it is a right of the federal government or, if not, it rests with the states. Originally RvW took a case which addressed an unenumerated right and decided it fell under the Federal government. At the time it was ruled on, it was expected (even by supporting Justices) to fall apart on challenge because it really wasn’t a federal issue. It was a decision based on federal government overreach.

^So. If I invented a religion where abortions were part of the religion, it would be OK then?...

@seawulf575 “Originally RvW took a case which addressed an unenumerated right and decided it fell under the Federal government”

That’s not what RvW said. It said it was a right of the PEOPLE to have control of their bodies and that government (at any level local/state/federal) didn’t get to restrict that right. See the 14th amendment.

“All persons born or naturalized in the United States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States and of the State wherein they reside. No State shall make or enforce any law which shall abridge the privileges or immunities of citizens of the United States; nor shall any State deprive any person of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law; nor deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws.”

We all get equal protection under the law (men and women) and the 9th amendment guarantees that our rights not otherwise enumerated are preserved. The states don’t get to make laws that affect us unequally. Hope that clears up the confusion.

@gorillapaws . Isn’t that what pro-lifers run with too? They consider the unborn child to have the same rights…

@gorillapaws I challenge you again. show me in the Constitution where it mentions abortion. Until you can do that, it falls under the unenumerated rights and as such falls to the SCOTUS to make a determination. Every one of their determinations can be reviewed and reversed in cases like this. The federal government is specifically granted oversight of specific categories. You jumped on the 14th amendment, but the 10th amendment is actually more pertinent

“The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to the States respectively, or to the people”

Since abortion is not mentioned in the Constitution, it means it would fall to the states to control. But that leads us to the 9th amendment which says:

“The enumeration in the Constitution, of certain rights, shall not be construed to deny or disparage others retained by the people.”

That brings us back to the idea of unenumerated rights. Those things that aren’t spelled out specifically in the Constitution but maybe should have been. And these are the things the SCOTUS rules on. And periodically they go back and change their rulings. In the case of RvW they determined that what goes on between a woman and her husband or her doctor isn’t something the federal government really needs to be in control of. That should fall to the states to regulate.

@seawulf575 Again, it says STATES can’t make laws that are applied unequally. It doesn’t need to explicitly mention abortion. For example a State can’t make a law that says black people need to wear a green hat on their heads. There’s nothing in the constitution that explicitly mentions green hats, but because a state is trying to make a law that’s being applied to people subject to the jurisdiction of the USA and it’s not being applied equally, then STATES aren’t allowed to do it.

“In the case of RvW they determined that what goes on between a woman and her husband or her doctor isn’t something the federal government really needs to be in control of.”

Again, this is not what RvW said. It’s the woman’s RIGHT to control her body that neither the federal, state or local laws can’t fuck with. The current court broke stare decisis and removed the rights of women to be protected from laws that governed their bodies. Stating that it the federal government’s jurisdiction that got shifted to the state’s jurisdiction is an inaccurate description of the rulings.

@gorillapaws It doesn’t say any such thing. States have all sorts of different laws. That is how our nation was set up. It was set up with federalism in mind. We were designed as a nation of separate, sovereign states with a central government that takes care of things that impact the entire nation (war, foreign affairs, interstate commerce, treaties, etc).

And you are completely ignoring the Dobbs decision. RvW set the basis for abortion being legal. If you go back and read it, it actually puts quite a few restrictions on the woman getting an abortion. It was Planned Parenthood v Casey case that opened the flood gates to pretty much make abortion the wild west, allowing whatever whenever. But regardless, Dobbs overruled RvW which was the basis for PPvC so they both went away.

As for stare decisis, You are really grasping at straws. The SCOTUS has done that many times in their history. And they have to periodically. If they didn’t we’d still have legal, federally mandated segregation. Wanna go back to that? That was the law of the land…until the SCOTUS broke stare decisis. Hell, if they didn’t break it periodically, interracial relationships, gay intercourse and several other things would be completely illegal. All these things had rulings that made them crimes…until the SCOTUS broke stare decisis.

And by your reasoning, since RvW was the law and immutable, now Dobbs v Jackson is law and cannot ever be changed. Might as well accept that or admit you are just venting.

@seawulf575 “We were designed as a nation of separate, sovereign states with a central government that takes care of things that impact the entire nation (war, foreign affairs, interstate commerce, treaties, etc).”

True. And then states rebelled in a treasonous act, got their asses kicked and the constitution was permanently changed with restrictions on what states can and can’t do. One of those restrictions is on states passing laws that are unequal.

I’m pretty sure the current SCOTUS has violated stare decisis more than any other court in history. They are conservative activists ruling from the bench and imposing minority views on the population that don’t follow the law, but advance a conservative political agenda.

Regarding abortion, putting control back to the states allows for civil rights to be trampled on. It is not what the Supreme Court is supposed to do. The Constitution protects individual rights. The laws at the federal level are supposed to be a minimum to meet to protect each citizen. Allowing abortion to be completely left up to the states has obviously taken away rights from women to have control over their own bodies.

Roe and Casey had limitations, and even allowed for states to put some rules in place that made women go through a series of hoops to get an abortion, but it protected her rights until the time of viability, which most Americans agree with. Americans seem to fall within the 12–24 week time frame, mostly 15–20 weeks. Laws are developed around ethics, what is ethical in a situation.

Most Americans are not in favor of completely removing the right or reducing the right to 6 weeks. Those moves wreak of Dominionist money in my opinion, or fanatics themselves. The only way to protect an American woman’s right to terminate a pregnancy or to hasten a failing pregnancy is to have the right at the federal level.

@gorillapaws No, the Constitution did not say all states had to treat all persons the same as every other state. It just isn’t there. You are hoping it is, but it isn’t. The 14th says a state has to treat all persons in that state the same. It was set up following the Civil War and was an effort to avoid segregation and other things that keep blacks separate. It does NOT take away autonomy of the states, does NOT make states subservient to the Federal masters, and does NOT say they have to be the same as all other states.

@JLeslie Your entire view assumes abortion to be a civil right. It isn’t. The irony of the entire thing is that much of the outrage about States holding the control make the same claims…that civil rights will be trampled on. They started off using a law being proposed in Louisiana as the prime example. That law was basically the same as the RvW decision. It had most of the same restrictions concerning time since conception and what was required for an abortion. In other words, the activists lied to anyone that would listen to stir up trouble.

Maybe it should be argued as a civil right, I’ve always thought that. Men aren’t ordered by the government to support another life.

@seawulf575 “No, the Constitution did not say all states had to treat all persons the same as every other state.”

Correct. Where did I say that?

@gorillapaws Again, it says STATES can’t make laws that are applied unequally. It doesn’t need to explicitly mention abortion. For example a State can’t make a law that says black people need to wear a green hat on their heads. There’s nothing in the constitution that explicitly mentions green hats, but because a state is trying to make a law that’s being applied to people subject to the jurisdiction of the USA and it’s not being applied equally, then STATES aren’t allowed to do it.”

And another:

“True. And then states rebelled in a treasonous act, got their asses kicked and the constitution was permanently changed with restrictions on what states can and can’t do. One of those restrictions is on states passing laws that are unequal.”

Maybe I misunderstood it, but aren’t you saying that states have to pass laws that are equal to each other? I believe the problem you are having is that you are still looking at this country as a Federal Government that allows states to do things. In some cases that is correct. More often it is done through coercion. But the states have individual rights to decide how their state is run. And technically, your statement of people subject to the jurisdiction of the USA is actually misunderstood. Technically, being a citizen of the USA would mean you were from the US Virgin Islands, Guam, Puerto Rico, The Northern Marianna Islands, American Samoa, and Washington DC. These are the territories that are under US control and are not considered sovereign states by themselves. All 50 states are NOT in that group as they are considered sovereign and self-governed. And as such, they are allowed to pass their own laws that apply to their citizens.

Our nation has a very symbiotic nature. 50 individual creatures that operate independently and in conjunction with another creature.

@seawulf575 “but aren’t you saying that states have to pass laws that are equal to each other?”

No, and I apologize for being unclear. I’m saying that women have equal protections as men. States can’t pass laws that don’t protect them equally. As we’ve seen these new laws are putting women’s lives in jeopardy

@gorillapaws But men and women ARE different. They are not treated equally ever. Even under federal law. Women are a protected class but men are not. So don’t tell me the laws have to give equal protections. And especially when it comes to divorce or child support. In a divorce, the woman walking into court is already assumed to be the better care giver. She can be a crack-head hoe that leaves her kids locked into their rooms for 18 hours a day, but is automatically assumed to be the better care giver. The man has to prove her unfit and even then it is likely she will get very generous time with the children and likely child support.

When a woman gets pregnant, there were two people present at the event that resulted in conception. Yet the man has no say in the situation until the baby is born and then it is often only to be a bank account. Something else he has no say over. So even RvW didn’t treat men and women equally. It specifically treated them differently.

The REAL solution is to put responsibility back into the act of having sex. At that point BOTH men and women have a say. And if a woman becomes pregnant, the decisions about that baby need to fall with both. There needs to be at least some discussion as to what is desired. I’d suggest a court ordered mediation session.

@seawulf575 “So don’t tell me the laws have to give equal protections”

It literally says that in the 14th amendment. It’s not me telling you that, it’s the constitution.

If you think paternity laws violate your rights to equal protections as a man, then I encourage you to file a lawsuit. I do agree that matters of custody can be unfairly biased against men in some cases. Still, that’s a very different thing than forcing women to give birth against their will. It puts them in physical danger, and in some medical situations an abortion is the appropriate standard of care, but they can’t be given until the pregnant woman is already septic. At that point she could become infertile, suffer permanent disabilities and even die.

@gorillapaws , Some people think that the fourteenth amendment must be strengthened by a new Equal Rights Amendment

I find it relevant that these issues would not be as important, if a bunch of women hadn’t voted Trump in and watched him place judges everywhere to suppress the female gender… Well done ladies of America…

@gorillapaws “It literally says that in the 14th amendment. It’s not me telling you that, it’s the constitution.” Then what you are saying is that because we have the 14th Amendment, ANY effort at favoring any class of citizen is illegal. Affirmative Action is illegal. You are favoring one group of citizens over others. Hell, for that matter establishing Juneteenth as a national holiday should have been illegal. In fact those laws you touted earlier after the south got their asses kicked in the Civil War were specific to one group of people. Roe v Wade favored women only. It took any rights the man might have to his children away from him. So that should also have been illegal from the outset. So you could say the current SCOTUS was upholding the 14th Amendment.

@seawulf575 “Then what you are saying is that because we have the 14th Amendment, ANY effort at favoring any class of citizen is illegal.”

“Equal Protections” is different than “equal.”

See Adarand Constructors, Inc. v. Peña

@gorillapaws First off, your citation shows that they broke Stare Decisis. Shame on them!

Secondly, Roe v Wade shows that men are not given any rights (no equal protection) for the lives of their children. It (and PPvC) stomped all over “Equal Protections”.