The death of a US Supreme Court Justice dies we read about term limits or age limits for justices. As someone who is near the age of some of the justices I feel safe in saying when I look at the annual picture of the court with them all robed and sitting together I am reminded about age, aging, and limits.
It is more politically correct to talk about term limits than age limits so lets talk about that first. Scholars and practitioners have talked about adjusting the life time appointment of all federal judges/justices. The founding fathers of our nation wanted a judiciary where the federal judges would not be politically influenced and thus gave them life time appointments. This article points out that this was when men and women rarely lived past their mid fifties. Today of course we have highly functioning, bright people who are 70s, 80s and beyond. However the stress of the judge and justices in the complexity of cases that come before them has to be enhanced with age. I am not sure leaving it up to individual judges and justices to make their mind up by themselves whether they are still physically and mentally capable of serving beyond or at a certain age is appropriate.
Might we give federal judges and justices two, ten year terms and that he/she cannot serve the second term if you will be 75, 80, etc., when you begin your second term. However no one in the federal judiciary can serve more than 20 years, or even 25 or 30 years--adjusting terms to fit the appropriate years of service thought of best by policy makers? In either case no one can serve beyond the 75, 80, etc., age--again which ever age policy makers decide.
In Michigan we have a state constitutional provision that says that state judges and justices can not serve beyond 70 and they cannot stand for reelection if they will turn 70 at the time they would be sworn in after the election. Seems to have worked fairly well, although I have met many 70 year old and older Michigan judges who feel the provision is unfair because they feel they are still competent. Now asking just lawyers whether an individual judge is still fit over 70 gets you a biased view since many of these lawyers practice in the courtrooms of these same judges.
I am sure someone might point out that we should have the same review, debate and discussion about the members of the United States Congress also. Good point.
It is also important to point out that the experience and expertise that we get from judges, justices and members of Congress with multiple years of service is important to effective governance of our nation. Michigan has found out that setting term limits too low causes huge problems with effective governance, with members having too little time in service and too little experience in dealing with complex problems before them. So policy makers and citizens need to be conscious of not setting term limits or age limits too low because of the unintended consequences.
The point is it is time to think about this issue at the federal level. A healthy and thorough debate by policy makers and citizens, along with federal judges/justices (and members of Congress) is needed and appropriate right now. This article does a good job of beginning that debate/discussion. Worth a read.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/wonk/wp/2016/02/13/why-its-time-to-get-serious-about-supreme-court-term-limits/
