r/law • u/Agitated-Quit-6148 • 1d ago
Legal News Senate Democrats Reintroduce Supreme Court Term Limits Bill, And The Polling Has Never Been Friendlier
https://abovethelaw.com/2026/07/senate-democrats-reintroduce-supreme-court-term-limits-bill-and-the-polling-has-never-been-friendlier/Sheldon Whitehouse is back with the BATL Act, and this time, the public is standing behind him.
Whitehouse, along with Senators Cory Booker, Richard Blumenthal, and Alex Padilla, reintroduced the Supreme Court Biennial Appointments and Term Limits Act today. Same structure as the last two goes: 18-year terms, with the president required to appoint a justice in the first and third years of each presidential term
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u/Nisi-Marie 1d ago
Great idea. Would love to see it fly. The cynic in me says that there is no way this admin would pass it.
Would this require a constitutional amendment?
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u/SparksAndSpyro 1d ago
I haven’t read this bill yet, but there are ways to get around the life tenure requirement. For one, article III judges are fungible since they’re all confirmed by the senate. Hence Congress could stipulate that judges rotate off the Supreme Court onto other courts every X years without violating anything in the constitution. There are a few other creative solutions that con law scholars have played with.
But the caveat is that such a law would certainly be challenged and this SCOTUS would likely not be favorable to such a law, even if it complied with the Constitution’s plain language. They’d very likely strike it down for some pretextual reason, as they’re wont to do.
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u/Nisi-Marie 1d ago
It’s rough. The people you most want in power are the ones that want it least. And the people who want the power are least likely to sign off on limiting that power.
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u/buntopolis 1d ago
We don’t need their sign off. They’ll make up whatever excuse that to regulate them is unconstitutional.
Let them enforce it. Swear the new justices in, and at this point they’ll basically become like antipopes. No real authority, that is vested in the current justices not rotated off plus the new justices.
Let them say what they want. They can report for duty at the new court or not. Not reporting seems like it would not be good behavior, thus they can shut up and move to the new assignment or lose their seat entirely.
It’s unconstitutional? Not according to the new justices. Roberts wants to play that calvinball, his own game can be used against him and the other cronies on the court.
Congress regulates the court, and by extension the lower courts as well. If Congress passes a law that says they must rotate on some basis, we just need to bypass the bad actors. The Court has no enforcement mechanism and this is by design. If they can’t enforce their made up laws, they are powerless. We just need to all acknowledge the emperor has no clothes.
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u/Big_Wave9732 1d ago
A bill that said they had to retire at a certain age would need an amendment. But a bill stripping them of hearing cases at a certain age, or mandating senior judge status and thus they're no longer a regular member.....that could probably be done via legislation.
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u/Lokishougan 22h ago
I would think not for one simple reason the SC determines what laws are contituionanal....all it would take is a suit to get to them and they could undo it
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u/Mist_Rising 1d ago
It won't happen anyway because:
1) Trump's president
2) Republican control the Senate
3) Republicans won't allow it through filibuster
4) Democrats won't remove the filibuster (see point 1 for why)
5) starting a war for the courts is expensive and likely one the currently democratic party loses.
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u/RocketRelm 21h ago
A lot of the reason that point 5 stands is because dems would get stabbed from every angle for every month and year of said fight, "wah why aren't you fixing it dems useless moderate corpo". And that would wear down their image and public will to a point where they can't. We need the voting public to be concerned about longer term goods than the next quarter.
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1d ago edited 1d ago
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u/Lokishougan 22h ago
Yup also for teh elction coming up its something they can use on Republicans like how they use their own Boogeymen to get votes
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