Over at The Right Coast, Mike Rappaport endorses the Lindgren/Calabresi proposal for eighteen year judicial term limits, which Ethan and I have already addressed. Rappaport offers a benefit I didn’t address:
“[Term limits] would promote a more regular appointment process, in which each President can has some influence on the Court.”
I didn’t realize that the “Metamucil Principle” was a goal of ours: Let All Presidents Appoint Justices Regularly and Equally.
Even before Supreme Court justices lasted for decades on end, there was no regularity or equality in appointments. Had Madison and the Framing Crew wanted to provide for quotas, they surely could have. But they chose not to, apparently under the theory that Justices should be more removed from the political process, rather than an “explicit spoil” of presidential elections, as Ward Farnsworth has said.
Farnsworth took on the “regularity” argument directly in an excellent debate he had with Norman Ornstein over at the Legal Affairs Debate Club. Read the debate in its entirety, but here’s a quick link to Farnsworth’s “regularity” point. The Framers were right. (Does that make Rappaport a member of The Left Coast? Or does it just make him wrong? Just asking.)
Posted by Administrators on April 10, 2005 at 02:19 PM
Comments
You’re right. If people want regularity they can just add more bran to their diet.
Surely the problem is that the appointments process is too political. If anything, this proposal makes it worse. Presidents will feel entitled to an ideological appointment because it is ‘their turn’. If you’re going to go in this direction, why not go all the way and have the justices elected directly by the people?
Posted by: Nigel Kearney | Apr 10, 2005 4:44:26 PM