Roberts Questioned Lifetime Appointments

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20050805/ap_on_go_su_co/roberts_court_tenure_1

Supreme Court nominee John Roberts, holding one lifetime appointment and seeking another, argued against them as a young lawyer in Ronald Reagan's White House.

At age 50, Roberts could influence federal law for many years to come. Two decades ago, however, he reasoned that long-entrenched judges could fall out of step with the society they serve. Limiting terms of federal judges would ensure a fresh supply of talent while guarding against "ivory tower" elitism, he wrote.

The Constitution "adopted life tenure at a time when people simply did not live as long as they do now," Roberts wrote in an Oct. 3, 1983, memo to White House Counsel Fred Fielding that is now on file at the Ronald Reagan Presidential Library.

"A judge insulated from the normal currents of life for 25 or 30 years was a rarity then but is becoming commonplace today," Roberts wrote. "Setting a term of, say, 15 years would ensure that federal judges would not lose all touch with reality through decades of ivory tower existence."

Roberts, then 28, offered his views while analyzing a Senate resolution that called for limiting members of the federal bench to 10-year terms, after which they could be reappointed.

Alexander Hamilton explained in the Federalist Papers why federal judges should be appointed for life and state specifically that there should be no age test. Disapproving of a New York provision requiring judges to retire at 60, he wrote:

"The deliberating and comparing faculties generally preserve their strength much beyond that period . . . . . In a republic, where fortunes are not affluent, and pensions not expedient, the dismission of men from stations in which they have served their country long and usefully, on which they depend for subsistence, and from which it will be too late to resort to any other occupation for a livelihood, ought to have some better apology to humanity, than is to be found in the imaginary danger of a superannuated bench." The Federalist No. 79.

Interesting how Hamilton associated living in a republic with "fortunes that are not affluent."

what difference would it make if a judge "fall(s) out of step with the society they serve" if the constitution is unchanging and to be interpreted as such?

Not in the Hamiltonian sense. Hamilton sure didn't want to severely limit federal power and probably would criticize the concept of state's rights. These Federalists are more like neo-confederates and anti-federalists.

There are many arguments to be made on behalf of lifetime appointments, but personally they make me queasy. For one thing, such appointments are for extremely powerful positions. For another, such appointments are not by the will of the people of the United States, but are subject to the caprice of one individual with a political agenda, such as we are experiencing right now. It isn't justice to hold 3 or 4 generations hostage to one political viewpoint.

There are good reasons for appointing judes to serve life terms.

Riiiiiiiight.

... since Roberts hasn't been a judge for more than a few years, and he's already grossly out-of-touch with society.

wanted to be sure there was room for him to ascend to the bench before he was age 40. Just my opinion.

freakin hypocrite :grr:

I doubt our founding fathers envisioned some of these judges (Rehnquist) holding on to their office like grim death. I would support a term limit of up to 20 years. Also, I would support an age limit of 75. These changes would require a constitutional amendment, therefore I see little chance of anything happening.