Three of the Supreme Court’s conservative justices could be forced off the bench all at once under a plan suddenly back in play now that Democrats have seized Congress.
One of the proposals for a constitutional amendment put forward by Maryland Democratic Rep. Johnny Olszewski would require sitting justices who have been on the court for more than 18 years to retire. Chief Justice John Roberts, Justice Samuel Alito, and Justice Clarence Thomas have all been on the court for over 18 years.
According to CBS, Democrats are expected to have at least 54 seats in the Senate and at least 250 in the House, giving them the opportunity to take up any legislation which would have been completely out of the question in the GOP-led Congress.
While the Democrats haven’t quite laid out their legislative agenda for the next Congress yet, House Democratic Leader Hakeem Jeffries, who is expected to be speaker in January, has said he has the Supreme Court on his mind.
“We must root out corrupt price gouging, clean up the mess at the Supreme Court and ban Members of Congress from trading stocks,” he wrote in a letter to his Democratic colleagues in which he formally announced his bid for the speaker’s gavel. “Accountability begins at home,” he added.
But calls for Supreme Court reform have been growing in the last few years since the Democrats were last in power, especially as the court’s conservative majority has gone on to overturn a number of long-established precedents and has expanded the powers of the executive.
Article III of the Constitution provides that Supreme Court justices and judges of the lower courts hold their seats “during good behavior,” and that has been interpreted to mean that they have life tenure.
But Democrats in Congress have argued that the justices should be subject to term limits and have put forward proposals to that end through legislation and constitutional amendments.
With Democrats now in the majority in the House, they could certainly move legislation to change the high court. It’s just unlikely to happen in the Senate, where the vast majority of legislation requires 60 votes to get through.
To amend the Constitution, Congress must pass a joint resolution with the support of two-thirds of both the House and the Senate. That resolution then has to be ratified by three-fourths of the states (38 of 50).
One of the term-limit proposals comes from Republican Rep. Tom Barrett of Michigan. His proposal for a constitutional amendment would limit terms of members of the Supreme Court and lower courts to 20 years. However, Barrett lost his re-election bid in Tuesday’s midterms.
