Two weeks before President Joe Biden formally proposed term limits for Supreme Court justices, former President Donald Trump preemptively condemned the idea. “Radical left-wing Democrats are desperately trying to ‘play referee’ by calling for an illegal and unconstitutional attack on our sacred Supreme Court of the United States,” Trump wrote on The Truth Society, emphasizing the need for a “fair and independent court.” importance.
This criticism obscures the fact that Supreme Court term limits have drawn support from legal scholars on the left and right. This is also difficult to take seriously because Trump himself is not a staunch defender of judicial independence and will only value judicial independence if it brings results he likes.
The 2021 report of the Biden-appointed Presidential Commission on the U.S. Supreme Court noted that “liberal and conservative constitutional scholars” both advocate term limits. The committee, composed of experts with varying views, did not take a position in any way, but it heard testimony from “a bipartisan group of experienced Supreme Court practitioners” in support of the concept.
Biden’s proposal replicates the most discussed version of the reform, in which justices’ terms would be staggered by 18 years and each president would have the opportunity to appoint a justice every two years. Biden believes Congress can create the system without amending the Constitution — a point on which committee members are divided.
The committee noted that “life tenure is virtually unique to the U.S. federal judiciary.” Supreme Courts in nearly all states and in all other major constitutional democracies have term limits and/or mandatory retirement ages.
Supporters of term limits argue that long, non-renewable terms would preserve judicial independence while preventing any one president’s lucky death or retirement from swaying the Supreme Court for decades. The benefits, they said, would include a more diverse mix of justices, less incentives for strategic retirements, less acrimony around appointments and greater long-term alignment between election results and the power to choose members of the Supreme Court.
Opponents of the reforms say they are designed to fix something that is not really broken and that we should be wary of changing a system that has worked for hundreds of years. They also worry that term limits will exacerbate legal instability, increase partisan bickering, further politicize the court, undermine its legitimacy, and undermine its independence.
Although Trump also expressed his final concerns, his sincerity is questionable. After all, it was the politician who drew a public rebuke from Chief Justice John Roberts by suggesting that federal judges instinctively side with the party of the president who appointed them.
Even worse, Trump thinks the judge should Take the orders of the president who picked them, assuming that president is Trump himself. He was reportedly furious at the “betrayal” of two of his nominees, Justices Neil Gorsuch and Brett Kavanaugh, who joined the majority in rejecting his subpoena for tax returns in July 2020. question.
Later that year, Trump expressed anger to the Supreme Court after it declined to hear two cases challenging the results of the 2020 presidential election. He complained that the justices — including Gorsuch, Kavanaugh and his third Supreme Court nominee, Amy Coney Barrett — “are just ‘holding back’ and not wanting to rule on the merits.” .
Two weeks later, Trump is called The judges were “totally incompetent, weak” and cowardly. He said that by refusing to consider his “absolute proof” of “massive electoral fraud” they were effectively supporting a “corrupt election” which meant “we don’t have a country!”
By contrast, when Biden started talking about term limits, Trump immediately jumped to the defense of “our respected Supreme Court,” which two weeks ago helped him out by granting potentially sweeping presidential immunity from prosecution. Dilemma. “We must fight for our fair and independent courts,” he declared.
We can count on Trump to continue this fight until the next time these courts conclude something offends him.
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