By Jack Haslett
The United States is founded on checks and balances. It is founded on democracy. We have fought wars for it, we have made ourselves the self-appointed global experts on it.
Democracy exists because of people’s will. The public’s ability to choose and un-choose leaders gives people the power they deserve in the system.
The accountability that comes with the brevity of an elected official’s term in their respective office ensures that people can choose the leaders they believe are fit and either continue to support those leaders when the time or oust them when they fail in their duties or when another is more competent.
“If you want independence, if you want someone to be able to stand aside from politics… there’s got to be a way that those justices are unaccountable for a certain period of time,” Dr. Jason Whitehead, professor of constitutional law and Director of the CSULB Legal Studies program said. “But that doesn’t necessarily mean forever, it doesn’t mean for a lifetime.”
The U.S is not a country of kings and oligarchs. We should not be a country of entrenched officials clinging to power. An official with an endless term may feel little concern for their duties, feel no remorse for their misgivings and have no concern for repercussions from the people they serve.
Why then, is the Supreme Court of the United States, the highest and most important court in the nation, made up of people who are just that?
A council of justices blessed with an office until the day they die does not serve the American people. It only serves people with power, and if they are unfit in their duties — whether that be due to their conduct or their incapacitated health — it falls to their own personal discretion to give up the most powerful position in their profession.
No one person can be trusted to do that, quite frankly.
The Constitution states that a justice may serve the Supreme Court as long as they remain in “good behavior,” meaning as long as they are fair and uncorrupt in their actions.
This clause is intended to set boundaries of conduct for justices and remove any worry of their departure from their minds so they may continue to do their duties. It is meant to show that a justice can be impeached and removed from their position if they are found to be abusing it.
However, like any other impeachment process, the agreement and bipartisan cooperation to enact justified change remains next to impossible, meaning justices can remain in power their entire lives despite their conduct.
Lifetime appointments of the Supreme Court must end. The only real “check and balance” of the most powerful court in the nation cannot begin and end at the president’s power to appoint justices, save for an impeachment process to remove ill-behaving justices, which has happened once in the history of the nation.
That is a half-measure. If anything, such a system only begets political rivalry between differing presidents and attempts to nullify the sway of a court one way with an appointment of another. As each of these appointed justices lives out their terms, the political entrenchment only grows.
An alternative to holding the Supreme Court accountable is removing the appointment responsibility from the Executive Office, and instead having an independent council of legal scholars to appoint justices in order to remove political interference in their appointments.
I believe the Constitution, as vital as it is to the backbone of our legal system, lives as the nation lives and should change along with it. The world is starkly different than it has ever been before, and the laws and protections bestowed upon the U.S. by the Constitution should be interpreted in the context of the world as it is, not as it once was.
In that same way, the Supreme Court should be a living court. There should some turnaround in the court that is not beholden to one justice dying on the others.
This is not a nation of kings. The American people are not serfs left to pray that a position in the court will open up and be filled by an asset of the people and of legal precedent. We did not toss the tea into Boston harbor to let an ancient parliament clad in black robes and seated at gilded desks decide our fates for us. That cannot be our way.
