JUDGES ON LIFE-SUPPORT

Isn’t it about time that we stopped giving Supreme Court judges a lifetime job? The president doesn’t even get that. No one gets that.

Germany has a 12-year limit for its high court judges. France, Italy and Spain have a nine-year term for their judges. Other nations such as Israel and Australia kick their judges out when they reach 70 years of age. Canada shows them the door at 75. Beyond judicial term limits and a mandatory retirement age, it’s also worth considering multiple appointing authorities.

In France, Germany and Italy, no single person or institution has a monopoly on appointments to the constitutional court. In Spain, four judges are appointed by the upper house, four by the lower house, two by the government, and two by a Judges Council.

This seems so much more progressive than us giving our judges lifetime appointments.

I’d say ten years for the judge, maybe twelve, but that’s it. Then we bring in some new blood. Some new thinking.

Even our judges on the U.S. Court of Federal claims are limited to 15-year terms. Members of the Federal Reserve Board, who are shielded from politics because they oversee the nation’s economy, serve 14-year terms, with their chairman appointed for a four-year term.

I think maybe this thing about our high court judges being appointed for life may have come from the fact that during the first 20 years, Supreme Court justices averaged 13 years of service. This is an acceptable figure. Later it went up to 26 years. That is when something should have been done; something changed.

I think everyone should be accountable to someone, but a person with a lifetime job is accountable to no one. During their later years, they can develop weird ideas, but these ideas must still be accepted as gospel.

This is not how this country should be run. We must get the Supreme Court judges away from politics and back to where they can concentrate only on the constitutionality of cases brought before them.

The California Curmudgeon.