Application Exercise 2: Is There a Need to Place Term-Limits on Supreme Court Justices:?

Is There a Need to Place Term-Limit Supreme Court Justices? The selection of justices to serve on the U.S. Supreme Court is a complex process that now involves political, ideological, and demographic considerations, including race, sex, and religion. The American people usually indicate they prefer justices who are impartial, responsive to public sentiment, and favor the same policy preferences as they do. However, the most essential function of the Supreme Court in our constitutional system of government is protecting the rights of minorities. According to Erwin Chemerinsky, a leading scholar in constitutional law and current dean of the School of Law at the University of California, Berkley, the Supreme Court “…has failed to enforce the Constitution in times of crisis” throughout American history. (Chemerinsky, 2014, p. 89). It is often assumed that the individuals nominated to serve on the Supreme Court are among the best and brightest lawyers chosen to serve on the Supreme Court. First, having a law degree is not a qualification for serving on the Supreme Court. All justices have been trained in the law at this point in American history. A far more significant issue facing the country is Article III of the Constitution, which states that justices “shall hold their offices during good behavior” for life. Some of the largest failures of the Supreme Court in American history can be traced to the membership of the Court being out of step with the changes going on in the country at a critical point in American history. The Supreme Court’s decision in Dred Scott v. Sanford (1857) related to the issue of slavery in the United States and the Court’s decision is now viewed as one of the most infamous and consequential holdings in American history. There are three major components to the Court’s decision. First, the Court determined that a black person living in a “free state” did not make the slave a free person. Second, the Court held that a slave could not be a citizen of the United States, but a freed slave could be a citizen of a specific state. Finally, the Court held that the Missouri Compromise, enacted by Congress in 1820, was unconstitutional because Congress did not have the power to prohibit slavery in the territories. The decision also held that slave owners were guaranteed property rights under the Constitution's Fifth Amendment. This decision further polarized a deeply divided nation over the issue of slavery. White southerners who were slave owners were buoyant about the Court’s holding, but abolitionists and many other northerners were outraged by the decision. Instead of reducing tensions between the northern and southern states, the Court’s holding further increased tensions, which led to southern states succeeding from the union and eventually to a horrific and bloody Civil War. The War between the States claimed over 600,000 lives between 1861 and 1865. Following the end of the Civil War in April of 1865, Congress passed, and the states adopted the Reconstruction Amendments. The Thirteenth Amendment abolished slavery. The Fourteenth Amendment gave citizenship to all persons born in the United States. The Fifteenth Amendment gave black Americans the right to vote. These three amendments were explicitly designed to transfer political power from state governments to the federal government. That did not happen. In 1896, the Supreme Court in the case of Plessy v. Ferguson (1896) concluded that state laws mandating “separate but equal” public facilities did not violate the U.S. Constitution. The Court noted in its majority decision that Congress which had ratified the Fourteenth Amendment had also voted to segregate public schools in the District of Columbia. Justice John Marshall Harlan, the sole dissenter in the Plessy decision, wrote one of the most eloquent dissents in American history when he pinned the following statement: “Our Constitution is color-blind, and neither knows nor tolerates classes among citizens. With respect to civil rights, all citizens are equal before the law. The humblest is the peer of the most powerful.” He drew the obvious parallel with the Supreme Court's decision in Dred Scott. “In my opinion, the judgment this day rendered will, in time, be quite as pernicious as the decision made in the Dred Scott case…The destinies of the two races, in this country, are indissolubly linked together, and the interest of both require that the common government of all shall not permit the seeds of race hate to be planted under the sanction of law.” Justice Harlan proved to be clairvoyant. Dred Scott v. Sanford and Plessy v. Ferguson proved to be two of the most misguided Supreme Court decisions in American history. It was not until fifty-eight years later in Brown v. Board of Education (1954) that the Court held laws segregating the races in America violated the equal protection of the law clause of the Fourteenth Amendment. Before becoming Chief Justice of the U.S. Supreme Court, John Roberts acknowledged that life tenure on the Supreme Court was not a good idea. “The Framers adopted life tenure at a time when people simply did not live as long as they do now. A judge insulated from the normal currents of life for twenty-five or thirty years was a rarity but is becoming commonplace today. Setting a term of, say, fifteen years would ensure federal judges would not lose all touch with reality through the decades of the ivory tower's existence. It would also provide a more regular and greater degree of turnover among the judges. Both developments would, in my view, be healthy ones.” As a result of their life-long appointments, Supreme Court justices may have more influence over American public policy than any other branch of government. Senators must stand for re-election every six years, and a president must stand for re-election after a two-year term. Moreover, the maximum amount of time anyone can serve as president is eight years. For these reasons, the rules regarding how much a justice can serve on the Supreme Court need to be changed to reflect the realities of modern-day America. The amount of time that justices serve on the Court and increased polarization between the two major political parties, combined with changing the “rules of the game” to get justices approved to serve on the high court, has further politicized an already political confirmation process. All of these factors together have reduced public trust in the Supreme Court to an all-time low in American history. With this background, would placing term limits on the time a justice could serve on the high court help result in some of the aforementioned problems? How would such a process work? How would this change come about—through legislation or the adoption of a constitutional amendment? What effect would it have on the workings of the Court? What implications does it have for democracy in America? Directions: Write a five (5) page essay addressing the above questions.