The lifetime appointments used in the Supreme Court system have been frequently debated in the past decades. Considering that this approach has been written into the United States Constitution to avoid politicization, it has been regarded as the most prominent method of decreasing the influence on the Justices (Harr et al., 2017). Nevertheless, recent research claims that this strategy has become ineffective with the development of the US Court System and the overall growth of the government structures (Orentlicher, 2018). From my perspective, a lifetime appointment to the Supreme Court is not a beneficial approach for the modern age, and it cannot effectively prevent undue influence over the Justices.
Firstly, as the life expectancy has been elevated tremendously since the last century, the Justices’ time of service has also been extended. Rather than serving for approximately 10-15 years, the judges are now staying in the Supreme Court for almost three times longer; this tendency has been reported to affect their political decisions negatively (Orentlicher, 2018). In addition, prolonged employment as a Supreme Court judge also prompts Justices to plan their retirement to leave their position during the presidency which favors their views (Orentlicher, 2018). In this regard, even such decisions as retirement from service become political, facilitating politicization.
Another issue connected to lifetime appointments is the uneven distribution of judge selection timings. As elections can only begin with the death of a sitting Justice or their retirement, the latter being planned by judges, future changes in Justices’ numbers become unpredictable (Harr et al., 2017). Such a disbalance adversely affects the structure of the Supreme Court and introduces additional complications, which could be eliminated by appointing Justices’ for a given period of time.
References
Harr, J. S., Hess, K. M., & Orthmann, C. H. (2017). Constitutional law and the criminal justice system (7th ed.). Cengage Learning.
Orentlicher, D. (2018). Supreme Court reform: Desirable – and constitutionally required. Southern California Law Review Postscript, 92(29), p. 29–38.