Another vote for Supreme Court term limits
At least one idea (Texas governor and former GOP presidential hopeful Rick) Perry embraced was, and is, very good indeed. It involves the Supreme Court. The Governor may be a little shaky about the Court’s names and numbers, but he knows what to do about it. Here’s the proposal, straight from his now moribund campaign Web site:
A Constitutional Amendment creating 18-year terms staggered every 2 years, so that each of the nine Justices would be replaced in order of seniority every other year. This would be a prospective proposal, and would be applied to future judges only. Doing this would move the court closer to the people by ensuring that every President would have the opportunity to replace two Justices per term, and that no court could stretch its ideology over multiple generations. Further, this reform would maintain judicial independence, but instill regularity to the nominations process, discourage Justices from choosing a retirement date based on politics, and will stop the ever-increasing tenure of Justices.
This ingenious idea has been kicking around in legal circles for decades. It tiptoed into wider view in 2002, via a Washington Post op-ed piece by two prominent law professors of opposite ideological and political leanings: Yale’s Akhil Reed Amar, a Democrat, a former clerk for Stephen Breyer, and a stalwart of the liberal American Constitution Society; and Northwestern’s Steven G. Calabresi, a Republican, a former clerk for Antonin Scalia, and a co-founder of the conservative Federalist Society.What would happen in the event of death, retirement or incapacity of a justice? My suggestion would be to allow the president to appoint a justice to complete the unexpired portion of the term, even though that would, technically, give that president an outsized role in shaping the court in the near future.
To only way to sell this to Congress and the people would be to pass an enacting Constitutional amendment but specify that it was not to take effect for, say, 10 years and that sitting justices would be grandfathered into the rotation for life. That would remove most of the partisan barriers.