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Quite frankly I don't see almost anything wrong at all with the term limit proposal (#2), it seems pretty well thought out.... as long as long as we could fix the problem about the Senate indefinitely delaying holding hearings or constantly shooting down nominees. A notable silence.
In fact I like it quite a bit. 18 years is over four presidential cycles, which is quite a while (and nicely out of sync) and it would arguably make people treat presidential elections even more seriously if they knew that they were guaranteed a say in the judicial running of the country. Plus, there's at least some middle to long-term incentive for both parties to get it done, I think (short term of course it seems probably technically irrational from a pure power struggle perspective for the GOP).
Of course the link doesn't contain actual proposed language that I can see, and that would be nice to have. Would show some seriousness. I suppose people need to chew on the idea a little bit of course.
My main concern (aside from constitutionality) with this is that it seems like it might lead to more politicization. Currently, in theory, any president could appoint more justices, but the risk of big political swings is tempered by justices choosing to resign sometimes under favorable presidents, which reduces the chance of any given president changing the court's composition too much—they mostly replace justices with somewhat like-minded justices. On the other hand, this would mean that for every election, the president would get to appoint two justices independent of the retiring justices' leanings. This raises the salience of supreme court picks to presidential candidates, which only serves to politicize the court further. Now every election they would need to talk about court picks, and those picks will often matter.
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See below — if the court is a check on the executive the president being able to alter 2/9 of the court in one term and 4/9 in two terms really lessens the check and balance of the court.
That's somewhat fair. Do note of course that the Senate is still involved and has to sign off, so it's still involving all 3 branches, not just one. I think the proposal needs a little more detail or clarification about the expected role of the Senate.
Additionally, the fact that justices can't be removed (assuming #3 about ethics either doesn't pass or doesn't go too crazy partisan, and which needs WAY more work IMO to be worth considering) is still a big balance. 18 years is still mostly a lifetime appointment, and justices still care about the legacy of the court and their own reputation and such. Worrying about selection bias is still a totally valid concern though.
All of this misses the point though. We already see justices nominated and confirmed in roughly 18 year cycles! All this proposal does is standardize and make these changes more regular!! So basically the proposal can only make things better, not worse.
I could see however a variant of #3 being included either on its own or along with #2 (or implemented by tradition), where justices abstain by default from cases involving the sitting president who nominated them being a good compromise? That means a justice can't bail out their benefactor right away. That would come with its own downsides of course (e.g. a 5 justice court 7 years in to a two-term president). So I don't think it would work.
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