Should Supreme Court justices continue to have life tenure?

• Position: Debate

Four of the nine justices are 75 or older, prompting questions about how long they should be able to serve.

YES Stripping life tenure from Supreme Court justices would "fix" a nonexistent problem and threaten America's independent judiciary.

The Constitution gives Supreme Court justices and most federal judges the right to hold their offices until they die or retire. Many of our greatest justices, including Oliver Wendell Holmes and William Brennan, have served honorably on the Court well into old age. The argument that old people make bad judges smacks of age discrimination.

An independent judiciary is one of the most important guarantees in the Constitution. Life tenure is what allows judges to interpret the law free from the day-to-day political pressures that the executive and legislative branches of government face. Those pressures mean that Congress and the president sometimes fail to see (or choose to ignore) the bigger, longer-term picture in issues ranging from civil rights to presidential authority.

Furthermore, abolishing life tenure for Supreme Court justices would require a constitutional amendment. This would be a time-consuming and costly process and it would distract us from the many real problems facing our society.

In addition, such an amendment would set a dangerous precedent for other parts of our independent judiciary, such as giving state and local judges shorter terms of office or making it easier for politicians to fire them.

When it comes to the life tenure of Supreme Court justices, our Constitution is working just fine, and it would be foolish to tamper with it.

--NELL RICHARDS

Professor of Law, Washington University, St. Louis

NO We often say that Supreme Court justices have "life tenure." But that's just how we've interpreted the Constitution, which actually says justices can hold their offices as long as they maintain...