That’s “Democratic” as in “Democracy”, not the political party.
As a systems guy, I tend to look at problems with our Democracy as being natural consequences of the systems where it is embedded. I have come to settle on a few aspects of our system that have outsized influence. These changes are all big. But they aren’t as big or well known as many other focus areas.
Set the Supreme Court Justice Tenure at 18 years
I first came across this idea in a book by Justice John Paul Stevens called Six Amendments, and since come across it in multiple venues.
The core idea is simple. Currently, a Supreme Court Justice has life tenure. America is an outlier in this, pretty much every country has set limits. The Justice is there until they die or resign. Their term could be five or fifty years.
Instead of life tenure, they would get elected to exactly one term of eighteen years. Here are some of the benefits:
- It would remove the strategy of nominating and seating younger justices. Currently, each side wants to get young justices seated to lock in their advantage for a longer time period.
- There would be less concern of justices serving with degrading mental abilities.
- Current justices would have no reason to “game” their retirements.
- Each presidential term would “comes with” two justices. This would be consistent and reliable.
- Thus, the means to get a partisan advantage in the court would be getting more presidential terms rather than scorched earth tactics for each nomination. Since each administration gets two justices either way, there isn’t much reason to go crazy about each individual nominee.
- Because the Presidential terms is where power on the courts come from, it moves the venue of judicial nominations to the Presidential election process. It puts the politics of Supreme Court gaming back in the political arena. That is appropriate and fitting.
- The ongoing consistency would greatly reduce the partisan rancor of the current system.
I don’t know how this proposal deals with justices dying/retiring before 18 years and other issues covered here. But no matter how you slice it, it is a far more rational system than the current one.