Interesting article although too many of the comments reveal the authors political biases rather than discuss the article, or the facts.
So please allow me an observation.
It seems almost certain that Mr. Kavanaugh will be confirmed. It also seems likely that he will not serve for life, but will be impeached by a Democratic Congress for the multiple lies he has told, under oath, to the Senate.
The article also leaves out another important change. Before the Dred Scott Decision judges were simply less important, because they usually didn't overturn laws. Once they began doing so, it was a serious concern that powerful judges were sitting on the Supreme Court for decades and the the Court was insulated from popular opinion during all that time.
And this is why we need term limits for all political officials. Two terms for senators, four for congressmen/women and 12 years for judicial officials.
I never supported term limits but now that we have them in New York City, I think they work for the good. We have more turnover, new faces and new ideas.
1
Rehnquist, confirmed in the 80s, has also died.
@Steve Thomas
Rehnquist became Chief Justice in 1986 but had already been confirmed as Associate Justice in 1972. The NYT places Scalia's confirmation in the time span beginning 1975.
"Longer lives, longer terms and tougher nomination fights, as well as a premium on youth. "
What a joke the Republicans never put up resistance to leftist candidates like Sotomayer or Kagan nor do they try to destroy them as people in the way the Democrats and only the Democrats try to do. Of course that inequality does not exist for the leftist NY Times. The NY Times is the same disgraceful newspaper that thinks it fine to investigate Kavanaugh's wife's emails.
This excellent remedy was outlined by another reader of NY Times in early July, stating two changes: 1. Each seat on the Supreme Court would be limited to a term of 18 years, with terms staggered to expire every two years. That would allow every president to appoint at least two justices.
2. Every presidential nominee would be considered to be confirmed if the Senate does not affirm or reject the nomination within 120 days. The recess appointments clause should also be changed so that appointments are effective only for the recess and 120 days after the Senate returns to session.”
1
I favor federal judicial appointments being for a fixed period, say 30 years total, with no reversion or renewal. But I also favor term limits for all elected federal officials: 20 years with no more than 8 as President. And I favor banning all lobbyists from the District of Columbia, and restricting all legislators to the District of Columbia while Congress is in session. Holy Smokes, I'm a Democrat!
2
Age limits, if any, should be at least 90. Australia has a ridiculous 70 year age limit for its highest court — an age at which a combination of experience and reasoning ability is usually still rising.
But, as the article discusses, generous term limits would reduce the advantage of appointing politically-correct greenhorns.
@Watercannon Experience, yes. Reasoning ability, absolutely not. How would you like to have an 85 year-old person with dementia or cognitive impairment on the Court? The odds are four in ten.
@Greg Like Ginsberg, you would hope that judges would, on their own, or with a whisper in their ear, realize that they're losing it and retire. Sure, the risk of dementia is higher in one's 80s, but you have to trade that against the lost wisdom and the small number of judges who'd stubbornly hold on until the mandatory retirement age.
There are five living ex-presidents, six living ex-vice presidents. Even among party nominees for president, they are all alive since the 1980 election except Reagan and McCain whose mother attended his funeral. If Ruth Ginsberg lives as long as Mrs. McCain, she will be on the bench for more than 20 more years.
As I am sure others have posted, there are at least two answers to this problem- Give justices a term of 10 years or make them retire at 65.
The problem with a "conservative" court is not that such a court is not "liberal."
The problem is with the conservative mind.
Conservatives believe that a) we can return to the past (a physical impossibility) and that b) we should return to an idyllic past, which never existed.
Thus, the conservative Supreme Court justice in the 21st century believes that the late 18th century:
1) When a handful of white men controlled all power and wealth,
2) When wives could be sexually assaulted by their husband legally,
3) When mothers often died during and after childbirth because antibiotics and vaccines were unknown,
4) When the average life expectancy of all persons was between 30 and 40 years of age,
5) When most blacks were non-persons known as slaves, and
6) When Native Americans could be shot on site because they had no legal right to exist,
was the idyllic past to which we must return.
Thus, the Antebellum South, where married white Christian men had non-consensual sex with their female slaves (it was neither rape nor adultery since black women weren't considered to be "persons"), after which the children of white slave masters were then enslaved, was an idyllic time, many conservatives still believe, especially conservative Christians.
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@Jay David
A past where elected officials could vote on abortion law, rather than being told what to to by the Court, certainly existed up to 1973.
Absolute mandatory retirement at age 70, for all federally elected OR appointed positions. Judges, Congress and executive branch. NO exceptions. For the record, I’m almost 60. And, I’m not nearly as sharp as even 5 years ago. And honest enough to admit that fact. We do NOT have royalty, why should we have lifetime positions paid by the Taxpayers ??? A recipe for stagnation and decline. New blood, new ideas, new progress.
Seriously.
Well, 70 seems a little young, but the general idea seems sensible. Still, does this take a Constitutional amendment or something equally impossible? And what would it mean with a very retrograde and rightwing Supreme Court, if not one soon to be openly fascist, for perhaps a generation? So, are the ideas here, no matter how appealing, really no longer possible as the country turns to authoritarian control?
This is why the constitution has to change! Gun rights written for guns that fired one round every 5 minutes, versus today's killing machines! Supreme and Federal Court LIFETIME appointments lasting 15 years LONGER than when the originals were around! Congress members basically getting LIFETIME appointments due to gerrymandering! Yes, the swamp is disgusting and getting WORSE with current admin!
Can someone please do a similar analysis for the House and the Senate?
2
i don't see how we can limit the terms by age of SC Justices when we allow fossils to persist in the Congress interminably.
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@DaveD
The difference - WE have the option to vote out a congressional member.
The notion that any public office would be a lifetime appointment, with no available recourse to oppose said official afterwards, is absolutely insane.
This is patent tyranny.
1
When and IF Democrats regain control of Gubmint they should add 4-6 seats to the worst $COTU$ in more than 130 years and Nominate 30-something women and Minority Americans to fill the vacancies.
As there are currently 4 seats on the $COTU$ that were not condoned by the majority of Americans, it only seems fair that Democrats ‘pack the Court’.
2
@Blank
Which seats WERE condoned by the majority of Americans? I didn't think any of the judges were elected.
A single non-renewable term of ten to fifteen years--often coupled with a mandatory retirement age--is pretty much the norm in constitutional courts the world over.
The constitutional provision of service during good behavior should not be read to preclude such a general restriction on service.
1
And if we are going to restrict Justices terms because of age, then lets also do something more prosaic but likely to save more lives. Lets take away everyone's driver's license when they turn 80.
1
This interesting article strengthens my view that non-renewable fifteen year term limits are needed for Supreme Court's justices.
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@scott ochiltree
I agree with this concept, except to increase the limit to 20 years. The population at large, those from 20-50, find it difficult to relate to a Supreme Court dominated by justices over 65.
@Dan
I don"t need to relate to a Supreme Court Justice, I need their wisdom. Lately, everything said by everyone under age 50 is cloaked in ageism. I am not against term limits, I need a better reason than age. I'm also willing to listen to lowering the voting age to 16.
3
If one views this as a problem as I do, then at least a fair and simple fix is readily available. Give every president the chance to nominate a single justice at the beginning of each new 2 year sitting of Congress (Januaries of odd years). Give that justice a single 18 year term. Let a newly elected president be able to strip a Chief Justice of Chief status but not of Justice status. A one term president would thus get 2 appointments and a two termer would get four. If a justice dies in office, then that is an extra spot to appoint, but the likelihood of death in office is steadily declining. This means that the Court would still be a stable and slow changing body, but that it would gradually respond to the persistent voting of the American people in a steady way. Yes, it requires a constitutional amendment, but this particular change is not especially partisan and so it is not an impossible task. If my suggestion were in place now, we'd have one Trump appointee, four Obama appointees, and four GW Bush appointees, which is a pretty fair reflection of actual American electoral political over the last 20 years. But I'd love to hear about weaknesses of my idea...
5
I find it more than a little ironic that we have quite a few senators, a president, and others serving in government who are past retirement age while more than a few of us regular Americans, who are less than retirement age or just closing in on it, are often treated as if we're useless.
Lose a job in America if you're over the age of 45 and finding a new one that pays a decent salary can be next to impossible. Paying for health care, something like insulin if you are a type I diabetic, or other medication, and keeping up with needed check ups can bankrupt you. So who is benefitting from the increase in life expectancy here? Not most of us, not if we're not born rich or stumble into richness.
Modern medicine means nothing when you are discarded by society before you can retire. In my opinion, our entire social welfare system needs to be changed as does our political system. There are too many politicians out there who have not seen or paid attention to real Americans for decades. They have no idea what our lives are like. They are the elites they claim to resent.
As far as the Supreme Court goes, I don't think that any justice should have lifetime tenure any longer. We need different points of view. Some of the justices are too insulated from what life is and that isolation increases the longer they are on the court. It doesn't do to forget how 99% of us live. Citizens United was a bad decision and we're paying for it now.
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@hen3ry I doubt you are an attorney or have thought your position through. I believe a majority of Americans would vote for Conservatives which I am one. Certainly, this would be a good thing from a partisan point of view, but the uncertainty it would create would be disastrous for the law and our country.
It's high time we had term limits on the Supreme Court. A good example world be New York. On the Court of Appeals, New York's highest court, judges are limited to 14-year terms (though a judge can be reappointed).
There is also an age limit of 70 for judges, and in 2013, the voters were asked to amend the state constitution to raise it to 80. They overwhelmingly declined to do so.
7
There's another age-related matter which argues for establishing a minimum age for appointees to the Court. The area of the human brain which regulates impulsiveness does not fully develop on average until age 25. That happens to be the average age which surveyed young people cite as the beginning of adulthood.
Substantial adult life experience is an unspoken prerequisite to serve as a judge, especially a federal appellate judge, whether on a circuit court or the Supreme Court. I would argue that 25 or 30 years of adult life experience be required, so that these judges would be likely to have raised a child, seen parents into old age, have worked in a career long enough to have had to deal with their own major mistakes, and so on.
The U.S. Constitution is silent about qualifications for judges. Setting a minimum age of 55 for Supreme Court nominees and requiring re-confirmation at age 80 should be done through an Amendment. By age 85 half of the population is experiencing a degree of dementia.
8
The problem with lifetime appointments for a job that requires pristine cognitive function is that the brain does not cooperate with this premise. As anyone over 50-60 or anyone who has a parent over 70 has experienced, even in the best of us, memory and quick recall can begin to change. Sometimes quite subtle, other times profoundly.
How about cognitive function appraisals? Baseline at 55-60, required testing at 70.
7
While a 23-year-old law school graduate may have a law degree, that is all he has. It takes a good ten years, at least, with rigorous supervision, for a good lawyer, a smart, hard-working lawyer to hit his stride. Time in practice also allows a lawyer to connect the dots in the law and develop a sense of proportion and perspective not available to the young and inexperienced.
And while we are at it on the increasing lifespan, how many legislators, governors and presidents do we now have who should have been dead decades ago if the lifespan of a man in 1900 was still the rule—48 to 49 years.
So yes, duh, medicine is having an effect on government as well as breaking the financial foundation of social security, Medicare, Medicaid, private health insurance, etc. And what about supersonic jet aircraft, Rip Van Winkle?
1
It's time for a constitutional amendment setting the term of a Supreme Court justice at 18 years, with a new justice appointed every 2 years. Even better, let the new terms start in October of odd numbered years so confirmations aren't mixed with federal elections.
The Supreme Court should be the capstone of a long and distinguished judicial career, not something we give to relatively young people in order to prolong their influence on the Court.
21
Well at least they generally work until a late age rather than retiring at 65 and collecting a full pension for 25 or 30 years like many public sector employees. Working until 90 and after will obviously become more and more common. Many professional (non-physical labor) workers and business owners already keep working until they become too weak or sick to do so. Justices Stevens, Souter, and O'Connor all retired and are still living. Not only does one never know what cases will be before a court in decades to come or how a particular judge might rule, there is also no way of knowing when someone will retire or die. The larger issue of course is how we have gotten to a position in this country where who is on the Supreme Court has become of more than passing interest to anyone other than specialists in the law.
4
This article is based on a false historic premise--that adults in position to be nominated to the Supreme Court will live longer today than in the past. The article quotes life expectancy of only 40 years at the time of the Constitution, but that figure is irrelevant because it reflects life expectancy AT BIRTH. Childhood diseases killed a third of all children in those days, drastically reducing life expectancy at birth. But that says nothing about life expectancy in middle age. Those who made it to 50 in those days had remarkably similar life expectancies as those living today.
American life expectancy in middle age is today only four years more for white males than it was in 1850, and that is largely a reflection of the hard lives most working Americans led in that era--definitely not the lives Supreme Court nominees would have led. So there probably is little difference between the 1850's era life expectancy of a rich, privileged American male (the type nominated to the Supreme Court in that day) and Supreme Court nominees today.
11
@Chuck French - True the mention of life expectancy was irrelevant to this article, but the writers went on to provide the appropriate comparison - trends in life spans of people actually appointed to the court:
"The data confirms that the average life span of justices has steadily increased over the past two centuries. Justices confirmed before 1800 lived, on average, to age 67; those confirmed between 1950 and 1974 lived to almost 82. Only one justice (Antonin Scalia) confirmed between 1975 and the turn of the century has died, and the average age of this cohort to date is over 82 years."
The only problem with the notion that Supreme Court Justices are serving substantially longer terms is that it isn't true. Life expectancy was low in the early years of our history largely because tuberculosis and other childhood diseases caused very high infant mortality rates. Upscale white males appointed to the Court in their 40's could expect to live another 30 years. When you look at the longevity of Court justices, as many of the top twenty served before 1910 as after.
5
The only thing wrong with your comment is that it isn't true.
I mean.... the article contains a very ready to read graph showing length of tenure and judges confirmed more recently have a considerably longer time on the court.
Term limits!!!!
9
I find it ironic that we prize democracy, yet those serving on the Supreme Court and in Congress seem inclined to hold on to power right into their 80’s. Why? Do they imagine they are irreplaceable? I’d like to see an age limit for all branches of government. Say 70 to run for Senate, 74 to run for House and 76 to retire from Supreme Court. We need the fresher ideas of younger generations.
14
@DB - be careful what you wish for; this would force Justices Ginsberg and Bryer off the bench, Giving Mr. Trump two new seats to appoint.
1
I believe Kavanaugh will be confirmed, and he is probably no worse than other choices—unless confirmation can be delayed till Nov. 7, which I doubt....However, those who trust Kavanaugh’s claim that Roe is “settled law” should refer to John Roberts’ confirmation hearing claims that:
—the court merely calls “balls and strikes”
—“Judges are like umpires. Umpires don’t make the rules....”
—“Judges have to have the humility to recognize they operate within a system of precedent....”
How’s that playing out for us?
5
@Babs Roe v. Wade is only one of many Kavanaugh problems.
He's pro voter suppression.
He's for presidential power, even suggesting that Nixon was right.
He's against doing something about environmental degradation and climate change.
He's for wealth and power and against putting restraints on unlimited greed and income inequality.
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@Susan Anderson
I see only one tenable way forward here....Kavenaugh WILL be confirmed so, when control is regained by Dems.. they MUST appoint two more justices...before everyone jumps up and down on me...there IS precedent for altering the size of the court...it's been done before.
The sheer number of rights that will be substancially altered, or completely lost during the next thirty years will have the effect of turning this into a caste society...the astronomically über wealthy, and the rest of the population that will serve them.
This MUST be seriously considered, if this seems extremist, I ask you to look at what McConnell has "accomplished" thus far, he's PACKED the lower courts w/hard right, barely qualified in some cases, fringe jurists.... this is only year TWO, once they have Kavenaugh... buckle up...
1
Roberts also said that he was against activist judges yet almost as soon as he was confirmed he openly invited a challenge to campaign finance laws in what became the Citizens United case.
1
This article highlights the long term power of Supreme Court justices. This is a vital and valid concern.
I question the open-mindedness of commenters who use the terms “nothing-burger” and “mainstream media.”
5
my question is , when l turn 65 years old , the Co, l was working nicely show the door, and l retired.l am not a Supreme Court Judges but l was driving 120 miles a day 6 days a week, so been sharp and been in time, as important as judges, lifetime appointments belongs to 19 century, a term limits for Supreme Court Justices is a must, we all must agree that older we get every think slows including our brains, and also Supreme Court Justices must not been choose by a president but must choose a high jury
4
John Paul Stevens was a Supreme Court justice when I learned the nine in high school; he was still serving when I became a grandmother.
The outsize and long lasting impact of the Supreme Court makes it obvious that term limits are needed.
18
"Life tenure meant something different when the founders were drafting the Constitution and guaranteeing federal judges lifetime appointment “during good behavior” to insulate them from politics. Life expectancy was around 40"
The authors do not appear to understand this statistic. The average may have been 40 but that just reflects how many people died in infancy or in childhood. Even into the 1800's over a quarter of those born did not survive their 1st year, dragging down the average age people lived to.
Indeed had the authors read further down in their own article they would have seen that justices confirmed from our founding until 1900 lived to the average age of 67, which would be almost impossible if the typical person was dead by age 40.
24
If you had read the article more carefully, and looked at the graphics, you would have seen that the authors did point out the average age of justices sitting on the court in the 18th and 19th centuries, and that the average was 67-72.
Life expectancy at birth is not the same as the expected age at death of a person who is already an adult. Anyone ever nominated to the Supreme Court would have expected to live far beyond age 40!
7
" Life expectancy was around 40"
Oh hogwash - more of the incompetence with numbers.
Thomas Jefferson lived to 83
His daughter Lucy Elizabeth #1 age 1.
The average age of Jefferson and this daughters is 42
It is not so much that people are living longer, it is that more survive infancy and childhood so that makes the "average" lifespan go up.
36
@AnnS, I thought the same thing. A true comparison would be the life expectancy of those who were alive at age 50.
2
@AnnS But we're talking about people who already survived infancy to be appointed to the Supreme Court as adults -- and even so the average lifespan of a Supreme Court justice is increasing.
10
@AnnS You are correct -- the extremely low life expectancies regularly cited for past generations arise from an ignorance of both statistics and demographics.
But your argument doesn't change the basic correctness of this article. Since the 1970s or so, modem medicine has increased the life expectancy of the elderly dramatically, and the age of retirement on the Supreme Court reflects this.
You can’t take it with you.
There should be term limits on all branches of the Federal Government. Three 4 year terms for the House, two 6 year terms for the Senate and a single 12 year term for Supreme Court justices.
23
@ML Sweet Yes, a single 12-year term makes a lot of sense. I think we could rotate one off every odd numbered (non-election) year. How to transition to this I'm not sure. But the current system is broken.
1
@Kim
We would actually be better off if there were no term limits on the presidency. Think of how differently Obama would have behaved during his first term if he thought he could be re-elected indefinitely. In his first meeting with the Republican minority leadership, he would not have asserted that he didn't have to pay any attention to them.
During his first four years in office, his every decision was short term, with an eye to re-election. Once he was re-elected, he opened up all of the stops, with the knowledge he would never be held accountable.
@ebmem; assume you are getting your ideas about Obama from Fox News, Lindbaugh, et. al. In fact, Obama strenuously worked to get GOP input on his proposals. McConnell, with his Party over Country priority, took the position that they would oppose everything and leave it at that. Obama finally gave up on that and went with the less effective "Executive Action" route, which as we have seen, is so easily rescinded and reversed.
1
Supreme court justices should have term limits. May be 10-12 years no more. They can then continue in the private sector if they so choose. This way no matter how long they are kept alive by modern medicines, they do not stay on the benches of the supreme court. Aging is a major factor that predisposes a person to Alzhiemer's Disease and no matter how old a person is there should be mental fitness evaluation for a particular job which has to be determined on an annual basis.
According to the birthdates listed on the Supreme Court website, the court's nine current justices will have an average age of 75 by the time the next presidential term ends on Jan. 20, 2021. This is hardly representative of the US population at retirement. The average retirement age in the U.S. is 62. The average life span of Americans is about 77.8 years and younger persons need to be given opportunities to work for key position that are tax payer supported.
Judge Kavanaugh if confirmed will a good momentum to having younger justices started by Gorsuch but there should be term limits so that the current situation does not persist for long.
5
@Girish Kotwal
Younger justice appointments started with Elana Kagan (remember her?)
The general population is older thanks to the same medical breakthroughs. They still vote and that changes politics as well. While SCOTUS Justices have power, so do elder voters who would not have been alive many decades in the past.
Yes there are serious implications for the SCOTUS as there are implications about an aging voter base.
1
I think all the angst and chest-beating about Kavanaugh is a nothing-burger, as is this article.
Justices live longer and are appointed earlier than ever; this is basic demographics, not a startling revelation.
Kavanaugh will almost certainly be approved, and his opinions and decisions will almost certainly be unpredictable. Once he is confirmed I suspect he will show a surprising degree of independence.
He has said that he views Roe v Wade as established law and I believe him. Harping on abortion is the effort of the mainstream media to agitate the Democratic base. What I think would be more useful would be to press the Democratic leadership (such as it is) to come up with a platform that will appeal not only to its base but to all the voters who felt ignored in 2016 and voted for Trump.
2
@Mon Ray
I find these types of responses extremely odd...wonder if you'll STILL think it's a "nothing burger" (DUMBEST phrase I've EVER had to type..) 15, 20, 30 yrs down the road?
The stakes will get higher each year as these hardliners carve away what's left of our rights...
only if you're not genetically able to give birth, is it "harping" to have concerns v/Roe, however, that speaks to my earlier point, at the moment, only issues that don't affect or concern you are at risk....Kavenaugh and Gorsuch, for sure, will be dictating our lives for 30+ yrs...I bet eventually they'll get to something that affects YOU...
Democrats seek to preserve rights, republicans seek to limit, narrow and strip away rights...how is THAT good for anyone...EVER?!?!
1
Unpredictable? He has the Heritage Foundation stamp of approval. If he wouldn't toe the corporate line, we wouldn't have been on the list
1
And with regard to Roe v. Wade, modern medicine including immediate detection of pregnancy and the ability to acquire self abortion medications at the very earliest possible moments will make legislative and judicial moves to overturn this law a moot exercise.
15
Similar eyebrow-raising might and should be made at the awarding of lifetime tenure to university professors.
7
@Dan
Did I miss something??? Professors have the ability to protect or strip constitutional rights now?? If not, I'd say that's being a bit more than hyperbolic...
2
"Recent polling shows that a majority of voters in both political parties support term limits for Supreme Court justices."
Further analysis of the data would probably suggest that the Democrats want term limits for Republican appointees while the Republicans want term limits for Democrat appointees.
It is probably true for most Justices of the Supreme Court, that the older they get and the longer they serve, the less inclined to dispense with the unwise enthusiasms of their youth and to focus, instead, on the compliance of their rulings with the intent of the Constitution.
3
@Richard Helfrich
Unwise enthusiasms like "corporations" are people, Citizens United, and neutering collective bargaining..are THOSE a few of the "enthusiasms" you speak of??
One cannot help but wonder about the effects of advanced aging on the cognitive abilities of SCOTUS justices as they serve well into their eighties. Aside from obvious changes in cognition, shouldn't we be at least thinking about whether cognitive assessments could or should be made and if so, by whom? This is a tough issue to grapple with but there is a lot of discussion around dementia and its explosive increase as people live longer.
1
I think it is time to adjust the constitution re this issue, not throw out the baby with the bath water.
Since the age facts you printed are hard facts, perhaps a limit of 30 yrs instead of lifetime tenure is in order. It would still preserve the original intent of long tenure without the issue of a senile, incompetent or extreme ideological zealot on the court for life.
It would be very difficult to achieve given the difficulty of creating an amendment to the Constitution.
However it is not impossible, dozens of amendments have been passed since our birth.
7
@Paul I think perhaps ten years would be more reasonable.
The authors overlook several other important factors.
1. In the pre-public health measures day when infections were the major killers, people wouldn't have had enough time to retire before being aware they had a serious illness. With major killers such as cholera, typhoid fever, malaria, and yellow fever, one could be healthy one day and dead the next. Today that is not going to happen with our major killers, cancer and heart disease. This might explain the tenures ending in death discrepancies.
2. At one time an appointment to the Supreme Court wasn't held in the high esteem it is considered today as the end point of a legal career for essentially the rest of one's life.
Until relatively recently, many appointees came from elected office and some returned to run again after resigning from the court. Even into the 1960s Arthur Goldberg did something that would be considered insanity today, resigning from the court to become for a brief period of time UN ambassador.
10
my understanding of the role of the supreme court is to have people who are immune to political pressures judge cases. the danger in setting term limits is that limited judges might get rewarded with cushy jobs from people grateful for their previous decisions and that such term limited judges might just plan ahead that way. In addition, presidents can take the chance on a young man to give the court 40 or 50 years, but young men's opinions can often mature in unexpected ways as they age, leaving a person on the court who is capable of changing his stripes for many years to come.
8
Earl Warren, for one.
There is a fundamental difference between justice and the Supreme Court. All Supreme Court judges are chosen for their political bias so that it seems normal in USA to expect the outcome of a case with political implications to be a decision favored by the majority of Justices on political grounds rather than the merits of the case.
27
@irdac
That only applies to justices nominated by Democrat presidents who always are selected for partisan reasons and always vote in lockstep on cases with political consequences.
Justices appointed by Republicans tend to be substantially less ideological. Sandra Day O'Conner, Souter, Kennedy, Roberts have vote on rulings in ways that cannot be predicted and are frequently at odds with their political opinions, while the four leftists never vary.
1