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1 Alicia Bannon & Michael Milov-Cordoba, Supreme Court Term Limits: A Path to a More Accountable High Court 1 (2023)

handle is hein.usreports/sprecotl0001 and id is 1 raw text is: Supreme Court Term Limits A Path to a More Accountable High Court By Alicia Bannon and Michael Milov-Cordoba PUBUSHED JUNE 20, 2023 Today's Supreme Court has assumed a degree of power and importance that would have been unrecognizable in the founding era.1 A recent cascade of ethics scandals has laid bare a system in which justices wield tremendous power for decades with little accountability,2 while the Court's rulings are increasingly unmoored from democratic values and the principle of judicial restraint.3 At the same time, polarization among the political parties and the justices themselves has dramatically increased the partisan stakes of the confir- mation process, leading to a broken system.4 Public trust in the Court is at a historical low.5 For all these reasons, there are growing calls for reform. Proposals range from creating an ethics code to expand- ing the Court to stripping its jurisdiction. One of the most popular options would also be among the most transfor- mative: establishing 18-year terms and regularized appointments for justices. Under this system, justices would sit in staggered terms of active service on the Court, such that a new vacancy would open every two years. Each president would have two, and only two, appointments during a four-year term. This paper explains how such a reform would work, why it would bolster the Court's legitimacy, and how to transition from the current system. It also discusses how the core elements of this reform could be adopted by stat- ute, consistent with the Constitution, by establishing the role of senior justice. Among other things, senior justices would hear cases by designation on the lower courts, step in to hear cases on the Supreme Court in the event of a recusal or unexpected vacancy, and assist with the management and administration of the federal courts. This framework is similar to the existing system of senior judges that has been in place for more than a century and has applied to the justices since 1937.6 However, rather than leave the timing of senior status up to the justices' discretion, under this reform Congress would create a schedule by which justices assume senior status auto- matically after 18 years of active service on the Court. The case for reform is compelling. On average, justices today sit on the bench for more than a decade longer than their predecessors did as recently as the 1960s.7 Several justices now on the Court are likely to hold office over as many as nine presidential terms. Unbounded tenure allows a single justice to shape the direction of the law for gener- ations, without regard for the evolving views and compo- sition of the electorate. It puts justices in an elite and unaccountable bubble for decades. No other major democ- racy in the world provides life tenure for high court judges who hear constitutional cases.8 With today's intense ideological polarization, every Supreme Court vacancy also takes on monumental stakes. Exercises of raw power have replaced long-established constitutional norms, upending the confirmation Brennan Center for Justice at New York University School of Law 1

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