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The New York Times/ ­- The Opinion Pages, Sáb, 14 de Abril de 2012
CLIPPING INTERNACIONAL (Supreme Court)
Should We End Life Tenure for Justices?
Re “Bring the Justices Back to Earth,” by Paul D.
Carrington (Op­-Ed, April 10), proposing new
appointments to the Supreme Court every two years:
The framers were well aware of the arguments for and
against life tenure for judges because state practices
offered a variety of approaches to structuring judicial
power. They expressly and unequivocally chose the
life tenure route. This decision did not mean that they
felt judges should be unconstrained. Rather, they
believed, as Alexander Hamilton wrote in “The
Federalist,” that impeachment is a “complete security”
against “deliberate usurpations” of power by federal
judges. In short, the system proposed by Professor
Carrington that, he claims, would “capture the benefits
of term limits” without the need to amend the
Constitution is both unnecessary and a threat to
judicial independence. SCOTT DOUGLAS GERBER
Ada, Ohio, April 10, 2012 The writer is a professor of
law at Ohio Northern University and the author of “A
Distinct Judicial Power: The Origins of an Independent
Judiciary, 1606­-1787.” To the Editor: The average life
expectancy in this country is twice as long as when the
first Supreme Court justices began their tenure in
1789. Of those appointed to that first court, only one
sat for a decade; the others served for nine years or
less. Of today’s bench, Justices Antonin Scalia,
Anthony M. Kennedy and Clarence Thomas are into
their third decade on the highest court. The four most
recent appointees, Elena Kagan, John G. Roberts Jr.,
Samuel A. Alito Jr. and Sonia Sotomayor, were all
born in the 1950s or 1960s. The tenure of some or all
of this foursome may be in its infancy. Clearly, the term
lengths contemplated by the framers of the
Constitution were vastly different from the reality of
the present world. If the reasonable expectation in the
late 1700s was that the court sit unimpeded by political
tensions, what we have witnessed in recent years, with
Bush v. Gore and Citizens United, is very far from that
ideal. With the pending ruling on the Affordable Care
Act, I fear this trend will continue, with devastating
results. It is past time that we reform this system,
where justices rule as virtual dictators, year after year,
free from oversight or ethical restraint. We should
apply 21st­-century reality to an 18th­-century document
and restrict how long any of these justices can reign.
ROBERT S. NUSSBAUM Fort Lee, N.J., April 10, 2012
To the Editor: Paul D. Carrington’s proposal to revise
the membership of the Supreme Court smacks of
President Franklin D. Roosevelt’s plan to pack the
court. If the court does uphold the Affordable Care Act,
will Mr. Carrington continue to champion his plan?
PETE JONES Wabash, Ind., April 10, 2012
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