Supreme Court TERM LIMITS Bill – A Game Changer!
(ConservativeInsider.org) – When President Donald Trump nominated Amy Coney Barrett to the US Supreme Court (SCOTUS) near the end of his presidency, Democrats were livid that a sixth conservative justice would be serving on the court for the rest of their life. With that, Progressives began to brainstorm various ways to limit the power of right-leaning justices, such as setting term limits and adding more justices, commonly called court packing. One Democrat just introduced a bill to start this process.
Georgia Congressman Introduces TERM Act
On Tuesday, July 26, House Representative Hank Johnson (D-GA) introduced the Supreme Court Tenure Establishment and Retirement Modernization (TERM) Act. Senator Sheldon Whitehouse (D-RI) will introduce the bill in the Senate.
If passed and signed into law by President Joe Biden, it would limit a SCOTUS justice to serving 18 years on the high court’s bench and allow the sitting president to nominate a new justice every 2 years. The legislation would also keep the number of justices on the bench at nine.
To defend his bill, Johnson said that the SCOTUS “is increasingly facing a legitimacy crisis,” emphasizing how most of the conservative justices “were appointed by presidents who lost the popular vote.” He used this to claim the bench no longer reflects the desires of the American people. The Georgia lawmaker is hoping this bill would allow Biden swing the court back to the center or left once again.
Separating Senior and Active SCOTUS Justices
The TERM Act would cause justices to be added to the bench every other year, meaning some would have to leave active service to keep just nine justices on the bench at a time. So, this new bill would have the longest serving justice move to “senior” status when the next justice is added.
These so-called “senior” jurists would “hold the office of Supreme Court justice, including official duties and compensation,” but would not serve on the bench unless it fell below nine active members for any reason, such as illness, retirement, or death.
Opposition to SCOTUS Reform
According to The Epoch Times, Harvard Law School professor Noah Feldman, who is on Biden’s Presidential Commission on the Supreme Court, has said any major reforms could prove “disastrous.” He believes such a move could “undermine the institutional legitimacy of the court.”
After major decisions like returning the choice of legalizing abortion to the states and upholding religious freedom in various ways, it is not surprising that Democrats want to make a change. However, this would fundamentally change the US justice system set up by our Founding Fathers. What do you think about this possible change?
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