Since SCOTUS reform is a hot button issue atm,

[QAnonKelly]

https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2012/01/30/perrys-good-idea

I found this on twitter in this context and I'd never heard of it before but I really like it. It was in Rick Perry's 2012 platform.  Each justice would serve 18-year terms and they would retire every other year in order of seniority. It would ensure that each president got the same number of nominees and that the balance of the court wasn't stuck in one place for too long.

[KingSweden]

It really was a good idea

[Antonio the Sixth]

It really was a good idea

[Zaybay]

I like this idea, it allows the SC to be influenced by modern problems(the fact most of the SC is around 70 is a problem), and stops justices from serving for life. While I am normally against term-limits, I am fully supportive of such a system on the SC

[MASHED POTATOES. VOTE!]

Fixed terms are better than mandatory retirement age, since the latter would result with 30s-years old getting appointed just to hold a seat the longer.

[Virginiá]

What I wonder about though is that with term limits, you create a situation where perhaps SCOTUS justices would be tempted to act/rule a certain way so as to increase their potential for earning after their 18 years. I don't know how you mitigate this without maybe creating a minimum age of 60 or so, so they are too old to have ambitious post-bench goals.

[Antonio the Sixth]

What I wonder about though is that with term limits, you create a situation where perhaps SCOTUS justices would be tempted to act/rule a certain way so as to increase their potential for earning after their 18 years. I don't know how you mitigate this without maybe creating a minimum age of 60 or so, so they are too old to have ambitious post-bench goals.

A lifetime ban on all political and lobbying positions strikes me as a good place to start.

[The Mikado]

Perry's plan still has the "what if a Justice dies relatively early on" problem. An 18 year term is long enough that death is a reasonable consideration.

[MarkD]

This kind of reform is not going to improve the Supreme Court and make it become more objective. There have been some great Justices who served over 25 years on the Court and I don't want to throw the baby out with the bath water.

[SteveRogers]

I don't see how making SCOTUS appointments a regularly-scheduled affair like the midterms is very likely to reverse the trend towards the hyper-politicization of the confirmation process.

[UncleSam]

Ya the real problem is that people treat the judicial branch like another legislative branch. Honestly as far as I’m concerned the judiciary should generally stay out of declaring things unconstitutional unless they are really egregious - when a democratically elected body implements a new policy legally, you ought to bend over backwards to try and allow it to be law. This is why the ObamaCare decision was a good one and why the travel ban decision was a good one (and the dissenters in both cases, aka everyone except for Roberts and including Kennedy, are shameless hacks).

If you don’t like a policy, win the next election. Don’t try and take a lawsuit to court to get it legislated from the bench. Sadly this is the reality we live in now, however.

[Statilius the Epicurean]

I never understood any of this nonsense about term limits or whatever, the solution to a partisan SCOTUS is perfectly simple: raise the bar for confirmation to require 2/3rds of the Senate. That instantly means moderates in both parties have to agree to confirm a justice and kills dead any ideological nominees.

[Pyro]

I never understood any of this nonsense about term limits or whatever, the solution to a partisan SCOTUS is perfectly simple: raise the bar for confirmation to require 2/3rds of the Senate. That instantly means moderates in both parties have to agree to confirm a justice and kills dead any ideological nominees.

I'm sure the GOP will be right on that after a Dem is elected president.

[Attorney General, LGC Speaker, and Former PPT Dwarven Dragon]

I don't see how making SCOTUS appointments a regularly-scheduled affair like the midterms is very likely to reverse the trend towards the hyper-politicization of the confirmation process.

A lot of the partisanship comes from the fact that justices serve 30 or 40 years on the court. One justice can quite literally change the court for generations, and trying to predict when the next favorable vacancy will come is a fool's errand. Under this, each justice's time on the court would be known and the order of the next vacancies to come would be known. As there would be a major election around the time of each vacancy, candidates would have to come up with concrete platforms regarding the type of justice they wanted, probably with examples of people they would likely support, and the will of the electorate regarding the type of justice desired by the people would be very clear. Furthermore, any longstanding precedents of the court would be longstanding bipartisan areas of near-permanent strong agreement, rather than just the creation of a partisan five justice majority that stays on the court for 40 years and conditions society to an unjust precedent such that it is not removed for a very long time, if at all. Furthermore, as precedent would  change fairly frequently, lower court judges would no longer be able to pretend to be non-ideological by hiding behind longstanding precedents, and thus we would have a more concrete understanding of what we are getting in each lower court judge.

The only potential problem to remedy is this:

Perry's plan still has the "what if a Justice dies relatively early on" problem. An 18 year term is long enough that death is a reasonable consideration.

[Kingpoleon]

The Supreme Court Justice should be allowed to give a list of potential successors to finish his term.

[Skill and Chance]

The ones I could get behind are 2/3rds or 3/4ths of the senate to confirm and 8 or 10 justices total to make it harder to overrule lower courts.  The 9th seat would be eliminated at the next vacancy or 10th seat added 2 presidential elections out to ensure that 1. the president at the time the law to create the 10th seat passes will have no role in the nomination process and 2. the entire senate has been up for reelection before the confirmation vote.

[Bojack Horseman]

As soon as Democrats get the trifecta, packing the court should be the first order of business. Adding ten seats to SCOTUS and confirming as left wing as possible justices in short order should be priority #1. After all, Republicans would do the exact same thing if the roles were reversed.

[MarkD]

As soon as Democrats get the trifecta, packing the court should be the first order of business. Adding ten seats to SCOTUS and confirming as left wing as possible justices in short order should be priority #1. After all, Republicans would do the exact same thing if the roles were reversed.

Attitudes like this are why the Supreme Court is so politicized, and why I don't trust either party to get the Court to where it should be -- the nine most objective interpreters of law in the country.

[Statilius the Epicurean]

As soon as Democrats get the trifecta, packing the court should be the first order of business. Adding ten seats to SCOTUS and confirming as left wing as possible justices in short order should be priority #1. After all, Republicans would do the exact same thing if the roles were reversed.

Court packing isn't really credible as it would just lead to nullification from red states.

[Associate Justice PiT]

As soon as Democrats get the trifecta, packing the court should be the first order of business. Adding ten seats to SCOTUS and confirming as left wing as possible justices in short order should be priority #1. After all, Republicans would do the exact same thing if the roles were reversed.

Court packing isn't really credible as it would just lead to nullification from red states.

     Not to mention that court packing would necessarily be answered tit for tat, reducing the judiciary to a strict subordinate of the executive/legislative. It is a game that has no positive outcome...or really any conceivable outcome other than discrediting the independence of the judiciary and gutting the checks and balances that exist on the power of government.

     As for your own proposal, I like it in principle, but the problem with the 2/3rds requirement is that I don't see party loyalty giving way any time soon; applied in itself, it would just lead to long-term gridlock where seats never get filled. There would need to be some mechanism that would fill the seats automatically if too much time passed, a la the Missouri Plan. In that situation, the politicians would be encouraged to work together to maintain some semblance of control over the situation.

[Skill and Chance]

As soon as Democrats get the trifecta, packing the court should be the first order of business. Adding ten seats to SCOTUS and confirming as left wing as possible justices in short order should be priority #1. After all, Republicans would do the exact same thing if the roles were reversed.

Court packing isn't really credible as it would just lead to nullification from red states.

     Not to mention that court packing would necessarily be answered tit for tat, reducing the judiciary to a strict subordinate of the executive/legislative. It is a game that has no positive outcome...or really any conceivable outcome other than discrediting the independence of the judiciary and gutting the checks and balances that exist on the power of government.

     As for your own proposal, I like it in principle, but the problem with the 2/3rds requirement is that I don't see party loyalty giving way any time soon; applied in itself, it would just lead to long-term gridlock where seats never get filled. There would need to be some mechanism that would fill the seats automatically if too much time passed, a la the Missouri Plan. In that situation, the politicians would be encouraged to work together to maintain some semblance of control over the situation.

How about just elect the justices then?

[Associate Justice PiT]

As soon as Democrats get the trifecta, packing the court should be the first order of business. Adding ten seats to SCOTUS and confirming as left wing as possible justices in short order should be priority #1. After all, Republicans would do the exact same thing if the roles were reversed.

Court packing isn't really credible as it would just lead to nullification from red states.

     Not to mention that court packing would necessarily be answered tit for tat, reducing the judiciary to a strict subordinate of the executive/legislative. It is a game that has no positive outcome...or really any conceivable outcome other than discrediting the independence of the judiciary and gutting the checks and balances that exist on the power of government.

     As for your own proposal, I like it in principle, but the problem with the 2/3rds requirement is that I don't see party loyalty giving way any time soon; applied in itself, it would just lead to long-term gridlock where seats never get filled. There would need to be some mechanism that would fill the seats automatically if too much time passed, a la the Missouri Plan. In that situation, the politicians would be encouraged to work together to maintain some semblance of control over the situation.

How about just elect the justices then?

     I guess it would be an improvement in that it would reduce the importance of partisan control of the executive and legislative branches as a factor, but that is damning with faint praise. Electing judges has caused many problems (particularly in the state of California), because their careers fall on the shoulders of a vast number of people with little to no knowledge about the law. If you think voters are already easily distracted by non-issues and red herrings, just wait until you see how bad it gets when you elect judges.

[krazen1211]

How about just elect the justices then?

If justices were elected from single member districts those districts could be gerrymandered.

The ones I could get behind are 2/3rds or 3/4ths of the senate to confirm and 8 or 10 justices total to make it harder to overrule lower courts. 

This would lead to obvious cherry harvesting and also cause problems when the various district courts split their decisions.