Reference no: EM133524824

Question

The United States is the only constitutional democracy that has lifetime tenure for federal judges and justices. More common across the democratic world are limited terms of about ten years. The argument made by the Founding Fathers was that lifetime tenure would give the federal judiciary a degree of independence to check the will of the majority from time to time. Should we amend the Constitution to change it to ten year terms? Were we to amend the Constitution so that our federal judges and justices served ten year terms, would that enhance the quality of our constitutional democracy or would it erode it? Is it a case of "if it ain't broke don't fix it," or should we move towards term-limited judges and justices so that we don't end up with an institution that reflects an earlier era in our history rather than the present?