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Tuesday, October 23, 2007
12 justices on the Supreme Court?
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
This week’s “We the People” topic is a suggestion by University of Virginia professor Larry Sabato that we increase the Supreme Court from nine members to 12, which he believes would address the phenomenon of one swing vote deciding all close cases.
“The problem with having an odd number of justices is that, increasingly, you find that one justice becomes the entire Supreme Court,” says Sabato, professor of politics at UVA and author of “A More Perfect Constitution. “Sandra Day O’Connor was the Supreme Court. Now Anthony Kennedy is becoming the Supreme Court. That is unhealthy.
“The advantage of having lots of 6-6 ties is, it simply upholds the lower-court judgment. So you don’t have precedents set. And courts ought to set precedent sparingly.”
Sabato also proposes that federal judges, who currently enjoy lifetime appointments, be limited to one 15-year term (including Supreme Court justices). What do you think? Should we increase the number of Supreme Court justices and limit their terms?
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