Author: Harris Van Pate, Youth Voice
Last month, President Biden delivered a speech at the Lyndon B. Johnson Presidential Library proposing a new policy that would shorten the terms of Supreme Court justices from lifetime terms to 18 years. Biden claimed the move would make judges more responsive to public opinion.
If Biden’s proposal had been enacted from our nation’s founding, we would not have had some of the most important opinions from former Supreme Court justices, including justices favored by Biden’s party like Justice Ginsburg.
Justice Ginsburg entered the U.S. Supreme Court in 1993 and served until his death at the end of 2020, serving a total of 27 years. She is widely regarded as one of the hardest-working judges in modern history. Under President Biden’s proposal, Justice Ginsburg would leave the court in 2011 before issuing any decisions she made during the final nine years of her life and tenure.
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While another Democratic-appointed justice may replace her (and they may rule similarly), few legal minds can match Ginsburg’s. Removing her from the Supreme Court would deprive the Court of a great thinker, writer, and justice, and many of her most popular and apolitical majorities and dissents would never occur.
Justice Ginsburg made many important decisions during her final nine years in office. In 2015, she wrote the majority opinion in Arizona State Legislature v. Arizona Independent Redistricting Commission, in which she ruled that the people of Arizona could give the power of redistricting to a bipartisan commission through a referendum. It was a 5-4 decision, meaning her vote was necessary for the majority.
She also wrote the majority opinion in Timms v. Indiana in 2019, when the court ruled that the Eighth Amendment prohibited states from imposing excessive fines for criminal penalties. In Obergefell v. Hodges, Justice Kennedy supported same-sex marriage by a 5-4 majority, which played a decisive role in obtaining federal protection for same-sex marriage. Justice Kennedy, who wrote the majority opinion, has served on the Supreme Court for 27 years. Without either of these two justices, we might not have national protection for same-sex marriage.
While President Biden believes that 18 years of restrictions would protect voting rights, many of Justice Ginsburg’s strongest arguments in favor of voting rights protections would never have occurred if Biden’s policies were in place. Whether for the majority or the dissent, Justice Ginsburg’s opinions have had an incredible impact on modern voting rights, especially 18 years after she took office.
On the 20th anniversary of her tenure, Ginsburg issued her most famous dissent in Shelby County v. Holder, in which three other justices joined her in arguing for continued federal protections for minorities American voters.
In her 26th year in office, she authored a 5-4 majority opinion in Virginia House of Representatives v. Bethune-Hill that required state attorneys general, rather than legislators, to prosecute federal racial injustice cases. Gerrymandering cases were litigated. These cases are alleged to suppress minority votes, and neither of her views would exist if Biden had term limits.
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When we hear powerful politicians making such suggestions, we should not limit our thoughts to current politics. Instead, we should focus on the long-term effects this policy may have on the courts.
What seems like a good idea today may soon make our country the next Justice Ginsburg, O’Connor, or Kennedy. Removing our nation’s most experienced judges because they have become a burden on the current political agenda will have negative consequences and lead to politics taking precedence over law and justice. The last thing we need is further politicization of the courts.
I sincerely hope that our country does not pass the amendment proposed by President Biden. If we do this, our nation’s high courts will lose their last bastion of impartial, non-political decision-making.
HarristruckPate is a staff writer and policy analyst at Youth Voices, specializing in law and public policy at the Maine Policy Institute. He is also an adjunct fellow at the Free State Foundation and has worked for a number of public policy organizations. Follow him on Twitter @Harris_VanPate.
