NYT opinion - Supreme Court needs term limits

Or in other words, "shite's not going our way. Let's change the rules!"

NYT clicks

So this week, HRC has called for doing away with the Electoral College. And Now some blowhard at the NYT thinks we should do away with life time appointments. If shite had gone the other way, no way that argument gets made.

quote:

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No other major democracy has lifetime appointments to its highest court. Only the United States does, and it creates all kinds of problems.

For one, our system often does not respect the will of the people. Rather than the Supreme Court’s makeup being determined by elections over many years, it’s based on a combination of those elections and the randomness of how long justices live. Jimmy Carter was unable to make a single nomination to the court because no justice died or retired during his four-year presidency. Richard Nixon filled four seats during his five-and-a-half years as president.

“The policy future of the country,” Norm Ornstein of the American Enterprise Institute has written, “depends as much on the actuarial tables and the luck of the draw for presidents as it does on the larger trends in politics and society.”

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quote:

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This unfairness born of randomness isn’t the only problem. Given the deep partisan polarization in America, lifetime appointments have also turned confirmations into epic political battles. That’s why the Brett Kavanaugh process feels so momentous. It’s why the Merrick Garland process — or the lack of one — still enrages so many people.

“It makes the stakes too high,” the political scientist Lee Drutman wrote this summer in Vox. “So here’s a simple idea to dial down some of the destructive warfare of the Supreme Court confirmation process: term limits for Supreme Court justices.”

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More in article. I'm actually quite impressed that they come up with a new way to try and resist every day.