A bipartisan group of legal experts including a federal appeals court judge and a former U.S. solicitor general on Wednesday threw their support behind 18-year term limits for U.S. Supreme Court justices, calling the proposal a "vital reform" that would reduce partisanship and improve the judiciary's overall reputation.
The 11-member group convened by the Cambridge, Massachusetts-based scholarly society to study how to implement term limits included U.S. Circuit Judge Diane Wood, a member of Chicago-based 7th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals and appointee of Democratic former President Bill Clinton.
Others included Charles Fried, a professor at Harvard Law School who served as U.S. solicitor general under Republican former President Ronald Reagan, and Akhil Reed Amar, a prominent constitutional law professor at Yale Law School.
Amar in interview said term limits would help reduce partisanship at the nine-member court by eliminating the incentive for presidents to appoint young justices and for justices to time their retirements based on a current president's party.
"It's an arms race for people to maximize the number of years of their influence, and that's not great," he said. "Justices time their resignations in political ways, and that's not great."
The report was released ahead of panel discussion on the proposal at the Edward M. Kennedy Institute for the U.S. Senate in Boston moderated by another sitting judge, U.S. District Judge Patti Saris.
Wood, a onetime Supreme Court contender herself, last year called the idea of 18-year term limits "intriguing." She told Reuters in an email that she agreed with the Wednesday report's conclusion that the U.S. Constitution would not bar legislation to implement their proposal.
"I also believe that the proposal would have a healthy effect in the direction of reassuring people that the Supreme Court is a Court , not just one more political institution," she wrote.
The report came as Democratic lawmakers have stepped up calls to reform the U.S. Supreme Court after a series of ethics scandals and a decline in its public approval that coincided with the conservative-majority court's ruling last year overturning the national right to abortion.
Legislation introduced by Democrats in the Senate and House of Representatives would similarly establish 18-year term limits.
Wednesday's report did not propose limiting how long Supreme Court justices could remain employed by the judiciary, only the nature of their life tenure, which they are guaranteed under the U.S. Constitution.
Justices after 18 years of active service would take "senior status," a form of semi-retirement, and be available to hear appeals at the lower-court level and help decide Supreme Court cases when other justices are not available.
Should an unexpected vacancy occur, the president would appoint someone to serve the remainder of the prior justice's 18-year term.
That proposal avoids the need for a difficult-to-achieve constitutional amendment and would allow Congress to reform the court through statute, which the group said could be legally implemented without violating the Constitution.
Read more:
Supreme Court ethics concerns aren't going away
Prominent U.S. appeals court judge calls Supreme Court term limits 'intriguing'
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