Reality-BasedTM Political Numbers from Nicholas Beaudrot
Electoral Math
Reality-BasedTM Political Numbers from Nicholas Beaudrot
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With the announcement that John G. Roberts will succeed William H. Rehnquist as Chief Justice of the Supreme Court, I think it's time to reconsider my favorite pet procedural change to The Way Things Work; a constitutional amendment setting minimum ages (probably fifty-five) and/or mandatory retirement ages (somewhere between seventy-five and eighty) for Supreme Court Justices. This would have the primary effect of forcing judicial nominees to build a record long enough to withstand some scruitiny, and the secondary effect of halting the conservative practice of packing the Court with Young Turks subservient to the Republican party line. (See Scalia, Antonio; Thomas, Clarence; and additional lower court appointments).
From the end of the Civil War until today, the average Justice served 14-15 years on the Supreme Court, if you eliminate FDR's liberal court-packing during the New Deal (the closest analogy to the modern conservative practice). Today, seven of nine members of the Court have lasted at least that long, and the two who haven't -- Ruth Bader Ginsburg and Steven Breyer -- will reach that mark by the end of the Bush Presidency.
Roberts, should he be confirmed, will be fifty or fifty-one years old when he takes a seat on the Court. Scalia was nominated at age 50; Clarence Thomas at age 43. Under the Clinton administration, Ginsburg was 60 when she was appointed to the Court, while Breyer was 56. That's an extra twenty-five person-years of conservative jurisprudence. I know the judicial branch is supposed to be the slowest moving branch of government (and generally that's a good thing), but medical advances, the politicization of the judiciary, and the rise of a stronger clerk system have made it much more likely for Justices to serve twenty and twenty-five year terms.
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updated by Nicholas Beaudrot on 06:50 06 September 2005
