Nuclear Freeze
Whatever happens with the nuclear option, judicial appointments are likely to remain ugly for some time to come, as a result of long-term trends that first afflicted Supreme Court nominations and with Reagan, Clinton, and Bush increasingly spilled down to the appellate level. One idea I’ve floated with friends on the left and right that ...
Whatever happens with the nuclear option, judicial appointments are likely to remain ugly for some time to come, as a result of long-term trends that first afflicted Supreme Court nominations and with Reagan, Clinton, and Bush increasingly spilled down to the appellate level. One idea I've floated with friends on the left and right that might ultimately be less draining of political energies -- and whose appeal seems inherently no greater to left or right -- would be to do away with lifetime judicial appointments. Fairly certain others must have had this idea first, I did a quick Google search and turned up an op-ed by none other than ? Norman Ornstein, Washington's genius of centrist policy solutions! I should have known! I would think a 20- or 25-year term would be necessary for the political insulation of judges; Ornstein suggests a 15-year term:
Whatever happens with the nuclear option, judicial appointments are likely to remain ugly for some time to come, as a result of long-term trends that first afflicted Supreme Court nominations and with Reagan, Clinton, and Bush increasingly spilled down to the appellate level. One idea I’ve floated with friends on the left and right that might ultimately be less draining of political energies — and whose appeal seems inherently no greater to left or right — would be to do away with lifetime judicial appointments. Fairly certain others must have had this idea first, I did a quick Google search and turned up an op-ed by none other than ? Norman Ornstein, Washington’s genius of centrist policy solutions! I should have known! I would think a 20- or 25-year term would be necessary for the political insulation of judges; Ornstein suggests a 15-year term:
A 15-year term would still provide insulation from political pressure; that tenure is seven years longer than any president can serve. It would allow plenty of time for a judge or justice to make a substantial contribution while diluting the efforts of any president to project his views onto future generations. It has worked admirably well in other jobs that require independence to be effective — for example, the Comptroller General of the United States.
Obviously, we’d need to amend the Constitution. But given that both liberals and conservatives now fear the power of “unelected” federal judges, it might draw one of those wacky strange-bedfellow across-the-spectrum coalitions. If an AEI scholar (even a liberal one) can get published on ReclaimDemocracy.org (with which I was unacquainted until now), who knows? ? One error in the Ornstein piece. He repeats the inside-the-Beltway CW that the judicial nomination wars began in 1987 over Robert Bork. Not so!
Daniel W. Drezner is a professor of international politics at the Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy at Tufts University and co-host of the Space the Nation podcast. Twitter: @dandrezner
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