Last Updated on July 28, 2022
A group of Congressional Democrats that includes career politicians who have spent decades in Washington is proposing legislation to enact term limits for Supreme Court justices in the wake of the court’s Roe reversal and other recent rulings dealing blows to their left-wing agenda.
Georgia Democrat Hank Johnson, who once expressed concern that the island of Guam would “capsize” due to an overpopulation of US troops, introduced the legislation to term limit Supreme Court justices, claiming that the effort will “restore legitimacy” to the court. The legislation comes amidst an uptick in attacks on the court by Democrats and the political left and failed attempts by Democrats to “pack” the court full of additional left-wing justices to overrule its current pro-Constitution majority.
The bill, titled the Supreme Court Tenure Establishment and Retirement Modernization (TERM) Act is being co-sponsored by a number of Johnson’s fellow Democrats, many of whom, like Johnson who has been in Congress since 2007, are career politicians.
Included among the bill’s co-sponsors is Jerry Nadler, of New York’s 10th District, who has been in Congress since 1992 and was first elected to the New York State Assembly in 1977. Dating back to the 1990s, Nadler has opposed term limits for members of Congress, like himself.
Also numbered among the so-called TERM Act’s co-sponsors are Democrat Representatives Shelia Jackson Lee, of Texas, and Steve Cohen, of Tennesee. Jackson Lee has been in Congress almost as long as Jerry Nadler, coming to Washington in 1995. Cohen, who was first elected to the Tennessee State Senate in 1983, spent well over two decades in that body before bouncing to Capitol Hill 15 years ago in 2007.
In the Senate, the legislation is being carried by career Democrat politician Sheldon Whitehouse, who has been in politics for decades and in the Senate since 2007.
Under the proposed legislation, justices would be limited to serving 18 years on the high court and each president would be “entitled” to appoint at least two justices, with a new justice leaving and coming on to the bench every 2 years, drawing comparisons the unstable judiciaries of some third world nations.
In a public statement announcing the proposed legislation, Rep. Hank Johnson claimed that the Supreme Court is “facing a legitimacy crisis” after it had backed the Constitution, and was joined by the bill’s co-sponsors in expressing a sense of urgency to drastically remake the Supreme Court in an effort to rescue their far-left agenda.
“With all the harmful and out-of-touch rulings from the Supreme Court this last year, legislation creating 18-year terms for justices is essential. Otherwise, we will be left with a backward-looking majority for a generation or more,” Rep. Jerry Nadler said.Â
