A Case for Supreme Court Term Limits? The Changing Ideological Relationship between Appointing Presidents and Supreme Court Justices

The desirability of complete judicial independence has been debated in several recent works. At issue is whether democratic theory is compatible with policy making by the unelected U.S. Supreme Court justices, particularly as their service becomes further removed from the time when elected officials played a role in their appointment. We examine the relationship between appointing presidents and Supreme Court justices. Relying on ideal points that place all actors in the same scale, our regression models show that a justice will drift from the ideology of an appointing president with each additional term served, even after controlling for ideological shifts in political climate. The beginning of the eleventh term is when ideological drift becomes significant. The connection between justices and democratically elected officials begins to wane after this point in a justice's tenure—a finding that is likely to be germane for proponents of term limits for Supreme Court justices. Related Articles Sharma, Hemant, and John M. Scheb II. 2011. “The Impact of Divided Government on the Supreme Court Appointment Process: An Assessment of Judicial Extremism, 1946-2009.” Politics & Policy 39 (6): 1077-1105. http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/j.1747-1346.2011.00325.x/abstract Basabe-Serrano, Santiago. 2012. “Presidential Power and the Judicialization of Politics as Determinants of Institutional Change in the Judiciary: The Supreme Court of Ecuador (1979-2009).” Politics & Policy 40 (2): 339-361. http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/j.1747-1346.2012.00348.x/abstract McCall, Madhavi. 2003. “The Politics of Judicial Elections: The Influence of Campaign Contributions on the Voting Patterns of Texas Supreme Court Justices, 1994-1997.” Politics & Policy 31 (2): 314-343, http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/j.1747-1346.2003.tb00151.x/abstract Related Media The Judicial Common Space: http://epstein.usc.edu/research/JCS.html The American Presidency Project. 2013. http://www.presidency.ucsb.edu/ Greene, Jamal. 2012. “Term Limits for Federal Judges.” New York Times. July 8. http://www.nytimes.com/roomfordebate/2012/07/08/another-stab-at-the-us-constitution/revisiting-the-constitution-we-need-term-limits-for-federal-judges La deseabilidad de la independencia judicial ha sido debatida en varios trabajos recientes. Lo que esta en juego es si la teoria democratica es compatible con la hechura de politicas por parte de jueces de la Suprema Corte, no elegidos democraticamente, especialmente si consideran sus posiciones ideologicas a lo largo de su permanencia en el cargo. Examinamos aqui la relacion entre la eleccion de presidentes y la designacion de jueces. Nuestros modelos de regresion demuestran, basadas en puntos ideales que ubican a todos los actores en la misma escala, que un juez se alejara de la ideologia del presidente que lo designo de un periodo presidencial a otro, aun cuando se controlan desplazamientos ideologicos en la variable de clima politico. El inicio del 11avo periodo presidencial es cuando el desplazamiento se vuelve significativo. La conexion entre jueces y oficiales democraticamente elegidos comienza a desvanecerse en la carrera de los jueces, un hallazgo que consideramos es propicio para los defensores de limites a la permanencia en el cargo de jueces de la Suprema Corte.