Supreme Court Limits

As the American Government has moved from the old system to the new system the Supreme Court has been pulled along both directly and indirectly. With the advent of medicine the life span of the American citizen has been extended and this along with the appointment of younger Supreme Court Justices leads to individual Supreme Court Justices sitting on the bench for longer periods of time. The mean retirement age on the Supreme Court since 1971 has been 78.7 years whereas only 13.5% of regular Americans were still in the labor force at age 70-74 and only 5.3% were still working at ages 75 and older.1

In some ways this has shown itself to be a more democratic system with moving power more from the legislative body and more into the executive power since the Presidents appointed judges will be around longer to continue the President's felt impact longer. In other ways it has lessened the democratic system as the judges grow more out of touch with the people and as they age grow more resistant to change. They are also more closely related to the old system in that the political party affiliation of judges can become very important as their length of stay on the bench increases. This has led to a process that has become harmful to our system in the long run.

Recommendation to fix this flaw in our system would be for term limits for the Supreme Court and in my research I have read and agree with the recommendation of 18 year terms with a one term limit for Supreme Court Justices. These Supreme court Justices would then become Senior Justices. "Senior Justices would "sit on the Court when needed to assure a full bench, participate in the Court's authority to adopt procedural rules, and perform other judicial duties in the respective circuits or as otherwise designated by the Chief Justice."2

Several noted problems are that the Supreme Court is less susceptible to federalism control than other branches. Once the Supreme Court rules on something, a state or local level government has no recourse. A second problem is the Supreme Court judges get old and out of touch with the political culture and the technological advances of the general population. Third the means of appointing the Justices gives the executive branch power to affect decisions long after he has been gone from office. One President could appoint three judges who continue to decide cases for twenty years after he is gone while the next president would have zero appointments available to them. A fourth problem is that due to the dual party system of republicans and democrats in our system, the political party comes into play in a large way when it comes to Supreme Court Justices. We will look at each of these problem in turn.

First is the process of federal versus state control of cases. The federal government used to deal more with commerce and trade, treaties, and international affairs. It left a lot of the crime and control, education and everyday life issues in the hands of the states. As we move more towards the new system and the federal government becomes larger and develops a larger agenda it has started to make rulings in areas that were traditionally the states areas. This was done by using the commerce and necessary and proper clauses. While this was done though few realized that the Supreme Court has less vertical or Federalism control on it than their legislative or executive counterparts. Whereas a governor of a state could still make a decision or a state legislature could make a law and it would take the separations of power act to change it, ie the courts getting involved, with the Supreme Court they can overturn a state or local judges rulings without getting the other two parts of government involved. They have more power compared to their federalism counterparts than the other two parts of government. This in and of itself would not be a problem except when combined with the other three areas of problems I will detail below.

One of these problems is that the Supreme Court Judges are being appointed at a younger age and also living longer than was typical in the founding days of our country. This has led to the Judges being out of touch with our political culture and technological advances in our country which can affect their decisions. In a recent case, City of Ontario vs Quon, several of the judges were not knowledgeable about the internet and had to have a demonstration on the internet to familiarize themselves on the rulings. "The concept of text messages traveling through a service provider appeared to take more than one Justice by surprise. The Chief Justice admitted he believed that once "you push a button; it goes right to the other thing" without passing through a service provider. When Attorney Dammeir pointed out that in today's society it is reasonable to assume texts travel through a service provider, rather than directly from one device to another, Justice Scalia admitted, "Yeah, I didn't know."3

How does this bode for their decisions on file sharing, new I-phone technologies, Cyber crimes etc? A more consistent turnover of the Supreme Court ranks would be more likely to expose and educate them on the changes of what the public is thinking and the resources the average person has available to them in day to day life.

My third point is that a president could wind up appointing three judges or more while a different president would appoint zero judges. This allows a president to influence decisions long after his time in office is gone. One president with a single four year term would wind up with more lasting influence than a president with two four year terms. And this is very important in the fact that the Supreme Court is the least affected by the checks and balances part of our government. While congress can make a rule, the president can veto it. Even if congress passes