House Dems call for Supreme Court term limits: Here are the pros and cons
“I think the whole idea is to lower the political temperature surrounding the courts and our confirmation hearings,” said Anthony Marcum, a resident fellow at the R Street Institute. “The problem is, not only are these plans unconstitutional, but I fear they’ll have the exact opposite results.”
Rather than making confirmations less contentious, they’ll be permanently tied to every presidential race and Senate race, putting an even bigger political spotlight on the court, according to Marcum. “You won’t take away the political pressure on the courts, you’ll make it even worse.”
Under the proposal, a president serving two terms could appoint up to four justices. Marcum advised that could throw the court off-balance ideologically within a short period of time, especially if two presidents of the same party served two back-to-back terms. “You could very well go from eight Scalias to eight Ginsburgs in a relatively short period of time,” he said. “That sort of back and forth is not what people anticipate in these 18-year terms.”
If the court becomes overwhelmingly one-sided, there are fears that the majority could take advantage of its position to overturn precedent. Suzanna Sherry, a constitutional law professor at Vanderbilt Law School warned that welcoming a new justice to the court every two years “could wreak havoc on doctrinal stability.”
