While the likes of McConnell and Graham try to ram rod a character out of The Hand Maid's Tale on to the SCOTUS bench, and Pelosi tries to lobby support to pack the court with liberals after the Trump train leaves town, I say we double down and institute age limits for justices so that a lifetime isn't so long .
The Supreme Court of the United States is a weird animal. Nine people are selected to be the highest judges of the land, but by Constitutional edict, they have no requirements for education, age or even nationality. Trump could nominate Putin himself to be a justice on the Supreme Court and in all likelihood, McConnell would fall all over himself to get him a hearing.
Putin, currently a vivacious youngster by our current political standards at the tender of 68, could serve at least twenty or more years and truly turn this Nation into the Oligarchy he has engineered through Trump for years to come if he sat there.
What if we said however, that you had to be 70 to take the bench, so in all likely hood no one could do more than 18 years of damage. If they do survive into their Hundreds however, we will get the advantage of their wisdom. Rash dictators like Putin and Nazi marionettes like A.C.B. would never get the chance to sew women's vagina's shut?
If we are going to lift the Constitutional hood and turn the volume of the Court up to eleven, why not stick an age limit on appointees to the highest court in the land that says they can't put the robe on until they are 70.
People are Living longer
With seniors living well into their 90's and 100's these days and the idea that the Baby Boomers will run this airline for the rest of eternity, the political elites of both parties are working to engineer a SCOTUS that will serve the needs of the 60 plus crowd for decades to come
Trump's pick, Amy Coney Barrett is 48 years old. If she is appointed, which from all appearances is going to happen, she will serve a minimum of 30 years. Kavanaugh is a tender 55 years old, and will more than likely, serve as long or eve longer than RBG, who died at 87 years and served for 27 years.
If you look at it, the average time served by the current court is just over 15 years and that is because Trump has had two nominees appointed in the last term with a third likely to get the nod. The expectation is that these three justices will have a say in what happens in American juris prudence for the next three decades.
If that doesn't scare you, then that explains why you send your kids to the Freddy Kruger Day Care and Education Center for Gifted youth. That's a freaking nightmare of the tenth degree to think the these three people, will make up a majority with Clarence Thomas and Sam Alito, for at least the next decade and likely longer.
So then the liberals want to pack the court with at least two or maybe maybe four justices when the Dems get the gavel this Spring and that is just as scary.
The court could take a liberal sway for the next fifty years, where we are all taxed 50 percent and have to attend historical reeducation camps because they finally wake to the the fact that the Kennedy and Clinton were not heroes, but instead philandering womanizers who turned tricks in the oval office.
We are at a cross roads in our world, where the future is, for the first time in the history of the world, looking more bleak than ever and we are engineering the court to resist change as much as possible by allowing the extending age of people to slow the winds of change. It is happening exactly at a time when we need to speed up our action on key issues like social justice, global warming and fair access to technology.
What's Good For Two Branches, Should Be Good For The Third
Presidents can't take office until they have maintained a residence here for 14 years and reached the age of 35. Senator's have to be 30 and Representatives have to be 25. Now that I am in my 40's, I think those age limits are a bit too young, but when the founding fathers came up with them, life expectancy wasn't what it is today.
In those days, you could die from strep throat or even a rough bout with food poisoning. People were dropping like flies, so they had to get them while they were old enough to not be assholes, but not so old that would die in office.
No one thought to do that for the third branch though, as their concern was not getting too old, but not living long enough to make a difference. For the first twenty years of the nation no justice served longer than 20 years with shortest service coming from Thomas Johnson who only made for 163 days. It was all the first Presidents could do to fill the court, because they all kept dying off.
It wasn't until 1798 that they would appoint the first justice who would serve 30 years in Bushrod Washington. If you think about it, he witnessed the Revolutionary War and the advent of modern travel with the invention of the steam train. The world where he started with looked very different than the world he finished with and the law changed considerably over that time.
Bushrod Washington was only one of only six justices most of whom barely served a couple years. It wasn't until the the twentieth century that it became common place for justices to make to 30 years and no one has ever served more than 36 and that was William O. Douglas who lived until 1980 and died at the age of 82.
If ACB is appointed and lives to a common life expectancy, we will have Mrs. Waterford in the highest court of the land for at least the next 40 years, if she lives as long as RBG. Odds are however she will be in her 90's when she calls it quits and we will have a cool half century of "Blessed be" and "Under his Eye".
If Biden gets the job and stacks the court, he is going create a court full of Billie Eilish and Justin Bieber and we will have 2020 green-haired popstars with barely dry law degrees running the land until 2080. None of it is good and it seems like we're heading that direction at a million miles an hour.
Now I am not saying I am a fan of either party or either direction for the court. What I do think though is to change the makeup of the court, which I think we must do if ACB gets the nod, we have to get both houses and the president on board.
Marco Rubio wants to fix the court at nine and that would require a Constitutional amendment which if Trump gets to preside over the next session may be inevitable. But as I think the Trump train is leaving town, either voluntarily or involuntarily come January, it might behoove all involved to foster the spirit of cooperation in the new congress.
Maybe we give the Republicans a bone by giving them the votes to fix the court at nine, as long as we institute an age limit on the justices in the amendment to minimize future damage. Of course, if the libs offered Rubio his bone now, in exchange for tanking the ACB nomination, we could avert 50 years of Mrs. Waterford. Oh to dream.
Thanks for reading and remember, I'm just a sailor.
