A nation’s judiciary remains a critical part of its identity. Once this part of a government is corrupted, all hope for healthy reform, or to mitigate a nation’s wrongs, is gone. I heard that the U.S. president wants term limits put on the U.S. Supreme Court [SCOTUS]. Of interest is what Alexander Hamilton argued in favor of lifetime appointments to the Court [U.S. Constitution, Article 3, Section 1].
Lifetime appointments for jurists was intended to put their work above and beyond the reach of political pressures. Though a jurist might be impeached, there is a process involved for high crimes and misdemeanors—not because a political party disapproves any majority opinion from the court. The U.S. President called for an 18 year term presupposing that elderly jurists are less likely to support progressive ideas? To allow Congress to have a say in their term of office is to subject the court to political influence and persuasion instead of freeing SCOTUS to study and interpret the Constitution in a consistent and fair way.
As it is, to reach Senate consent, prospective candidates for the highest court must walk through a political mine field of “favored” interests of various senators without stepping on one blowing apart their own candidacy. Judge Ketanji Brown Jackson had to, in effect, deny her own gender identity to reach the bench. Judge Kavanaugh was forced to defend his high school past [Thank God for old calendars]. Such abuse—known as being “borked”—would be fine tuned by ruthless politicians in the name of democracy to turn what was intended as a separate power into an arm of some political party.
Hamilton Wrote in Federalist #81:
“Every reason which recommends the tenure of good behavior for judicial offices, militates against placing the judiciary power, in the last resort, in a body composed of men chosen for a limited period.”
It sounds as if Hamilton is arguing against giving the power of the judiciary to the legislature, because, in reality, if the Court cannot be a separate power, it has no power. Here are some he listed in The Federalist Papers (pp. 27-28). [Neeland Media LLC. Kindle Edition]. Hamilton wrote:
- The same spirit which had operated in making [the laws], would be too apt in interpreting them; still less could it be expected that men who had infringed the Constitution in the character of legislators, would be disposed to repair the breach in the character of judges.
- And there is a still greater absurdity in subjecting the decisions of men [and women], selected for their knowledge of the laws, acquired by long and laborious study, to the revision and control of men [and women] who, for want of the same advantage, cannot but be deficient in that knowledge.
- The members of the legislature will rarely be chosen with a view to those qualifications which fit men for the stations of judges;… on account of the natural propensity of such bodies [Congress] to party divisions, there will be no less reason to fear that the pestilential breath of faction may poison the fountains of justice.
Thought you should know…
