I'm a lawyer, and Supreme Court justices shouldn't have term limits — they should have age requirements, Business Insider - Business Insider Singapore
I’m a lawyer, and Supreme Court justices shouldn’t have term limits — they should have age requirements
Term limits would eliminate a consequence of life tenure that is an essential feature of our democracy: the Court’s relative lack of volatility.
Whenever a Supreme Court justice retires or passes away, there is often a political debate about nominations and the court’s ideology.
While some think term limits could discourage justices from retiring with political motivations, and encourage fresh perspectives, this is not necessarily the case.
Matthew Stanford, a California attorney, says term limits would not depoliticize the retirement or selection process.
Instead, he suggests that age requirements could better solve some of these issues, while maintaining a core feature of the Supreme Court: the relative lack of volatility.
Whenever a Supreme Court justiceretiresorpasses away, the conversation inevitably turns to term limits. As it should:Most votersfavor capping justices’ time on the Court, and it has rarebipartisan appeal. Even the current chief justice endorses the idea-or at leasthe did.
The supposed benefits of term limits are alluring. An18-year, non-renewable term, for instance, would make vacancies more predictable, granting each president two nominations per term. Assuming nobody dies or retires, no single president could handpick a majority of the Court.
Possible consequences of steady turnover provide additional fodder for term limit proponents: theoretically, term limits would end socially disconnected rulings and politically motivated retirements, and increase the likelihood of a court with an array of ideologies and fresh perspectives.
It’s likely that term limits would not prevent politically motivated justices from retiring during a favored administration, even by cutting their own terms short.
In fact, scheduling two vacancies per term could actually make this more appealing. Using the current composition of the Court as an example, consider the following hypothetical:
Justices Ginsburg and Breyer have terms that are set to expire before the 2020 election. Assume that the current administration is expected to lose reelection. Preferring not to have their seats filled by a Democratic president, Justices Thomas and Alito, whose terms will expire after the election, retire early. The outgoing president would get two more nominations at the expense of the next administration.
It’s easy to imagine the political turmoil that would ensue – especially in light of theemergent viewthat vacancies created in an election year should only be filled after the ballots have been counted.
And plugging this loophole would be tricky. As recent events might suggest, if there were an unexpected vacancy on the court before the end of a presidential term, neither law nor custom could prevent a determined Senate from nominating a candidate that aligns with their ideology and filling that vacancy before the next inauguration. Only a constitutional amendment could do that.
Otherwise, retirement games wouldn’t simply persist; they would worsen. Ironically, term limits would raise the stakes.
Term limits won’t depoliticize the selection process – it won’t prevent either party from using its preferred litmus tests for identifying potential justices. There is already ample concern aboutnominee reluctanceto discuss candidly their legal philosophies at confirmation hearings. Term limits might create predictable vacancies, yet it’s still largely unknown how that could impact prospective nominees
One thing term limits might reduce is the perceived disconnect between the realities of life-tenured justices and ordinary citizens.
But this problem is only partially related to the length of a justice’s term, and it assumes that age is a reliable proxy for social consciousness.
Even if that’s true, most of the blame belongs elsewhere-namely, the custom of nominating Yale and Harvard graduates holding some combination of prestigious practice, judicial, and/or academic positions. Term limits would do little to bridge the gap that makes the Court seem so otherworldly.
Still, the term limit discussion does raise an important consideration: modern life expectancies. Though undeniably a good thing, longer lifespans mean longer terms for justices. As Erwin Chemerinsky, Dean at Berkeley Law and a constitutional law scholar,explainedin The New Republic:
“Life expectancy is dramatically longer today than when the Constitution was written in 1787. The result is that Supreme Court justices are serving ever longer, with the last four to leave the court having served, on average, for 28 years. This trend is continuing with the current court. Clarence Thomas was 43 when he was appointed, and John Roberts and Elena Kagan were each 50 at the time of their appointments. If these justices serve until they are 90-the age at which Justice John Paul Stevens retired-they will have been on the bench for upwards of four decades apiece.”
Even assuming, as Chemerinsky seems to suggest, that longer terms are somehow antithetical to our constitutional system, a more modest revision would address this concern, and it would do so without sacrificing the judicial independence that motivated the Founders to include life tenure in Article III of the Constitution.
One must be 35 years old to run for President or Vice President, 30 for Senator, and 25 for Representative. (Whether those numbers ought also to be lifted is a discussion for another day.)
If providing a counterbalance to longer life expectancies is the core rationale for term limits, a minimum age-perhaps 60 or 65 years old-could accomplish this without the unintended consequences that term limits threaten.
It also would likely be an easier reform to implement. Although a constitutional amendment would be the most ironclad approach, a statute or even a custom establishing age requirements would likely suffice.
Finally, term limits would eliminate a consequence of life tenure, intended or not, that has become a unique, arguably essential feature of our constitutional republic: the relative lack of volatility, for which the Court is valued.
The Court is insulated from more direct forms of democracy. The elevated role of precedent in the work of the Court underscores this point. Even as the Founders were careful to avoid establishing anything resembling the British Crown, they nevertheless included life tenure in the 1787 Constitution. They presumably understood this to mean that justices and judges alike would largely remain in office for the remainders of their careers. Yet they included it anyway. Age, it would seem, was seen as an asset to the work of the judiciary, a feature of judicial independence rather than an oversight only recently brought into focus by improved life expectancies.
Term limits would abolish this feature despite their more modest purpose. A minimum age requirement would not.
The United States has the oldest written constitution still in use today. It is not enough to demand term limits simply because we are the only democracy that extends life tenure to its judiciary.
Before we proceed to jettison the order of constitutional elders that life tenure has effectively molded within our courts over the past 229 years, we would be wise to consider this less drastic alternative.
Matthew Stanford is a California attorney and Senior Research Fellow at the California Constitution Center. He is a graduate of Berkeley Law and Penn State University.
As one half of the creative team behind Green & Black’s chocolate, Jo Fairley is committed to ethical trading, but such ideals were not always readily accepted
Martin McGeough, the founder of Sligo orthotics company Firefly, is calmly navigating his way through choppy Brexit waters and enjoying the slow life in Yeats country
The founder of the Market Lane restaurant group had many people to thank for the success of his business after celebrating ten years in operation, not least his bank manager
Steve McCarthy, the founder of online property bidding platform BidX1, is evangelical about bringing technology to real estate, not just in Ireland, but in Europe too
The multimillionaire founder of Mayfair private equity firm CapVest has the plastics business One51, where he jousted with Dermot Desmond in the past, back in his crosshairs again
There is a reason I came over here, and it is not just to visit my mum. We are in business to do deals
Rory O’Driscoll leads a venture capital firm that has exited 39 investments at a value of $100 million each
First Data handles $2.2 trillion in transactions a year, and works with six million merchants and 4,000 banks globally
At 69, Pat Kenny is in no mood to hang up his microphone – even if he feels that secure, lengthy contracts tend to make people lazy
The chairperson of the Competition and Consumer Protection Commission is calling on the government to give the body greater powers of sanction
The hedge fund manager has taken a billion-dollar bet against Herbalife, the gigantic US nutritional supplements company
Sonya Lennon and Brendan Courtney had never met before the RTÉ show. The rest - including their own clothing line, Lennon Courtney - is Irish fashion history
ATLANTA--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Logility, Inc., a leading provider of collaborative supply chain optimization and advanced retail planning solutions, today announced Griffith Foods, a global provider of food ingredients with the company purpose of “blending care and creativity to nourish the world,” is expanding its use of Logility Voyager Solutions™ to more regions around the world. Since deploying Logility in North America, Griffith Foods has achieved significant benefits as a result of improved forecast visibility across the organization, realizing better inventory alignment and boosted customer service levels.
Griffith Foods operates a global supply chain that serves customers across multiple channels including retail, quick service, casual dining as well as warehouse clubs and distributors. Increasing this complexity, each product is customized specifically for individual customers. Griffith Foods primarily produces each product in the region it is sold while individual ingredients may be sourced from its global supply chain. These ingredients must make it to the right locations around the world to satisfy the unique demands of each region and each individual customer channel.
The initial rollout in North America enabled a more collaborative environment to drive an improved and streamlined S&OP process across multiple groups including sales, finance, planning and manufacturing. The company decreased working capital while improving service levels and reducing material obsolescence. Following this success, Griffith Foods has deployed Logility across Europe and is currently implementing the solution for Asian and South American operations.
“Our customers expect the highest quality products, exceptional service and new innovations to satisfy the changing and diverse tastes of consumers around the world,” said John McCarville, senior vice president, global supply chain & IT, Griffith Foods. “Our supply chain is critical to cost effectively meet these complex challenges. With Logility Voyager Solutions we have the visibility to accurately plan monthly, weekly and daily by product and customer. Logility allows us to be more strategic and proactive in aligning our sourcing, manufacturing and distribution operations.”
“For Griffith Foods capacity and people must come together at the right time to meet the unique requirements of its growing global customer base,” said Allan Dow, president, Logility. “We are excited to help Griffith Foods achieve greater visibility, synchronize demand and supply, and improve its leverage of inventory and production investments. Logility Voyager Solutions provides a platform for supply chain innovation to help companies turn challenges into opportunities for more profitable growth and service differentiation.”
With more than 1,300 customers worldwide, Logility is a leading provider of collaborative supply chain optimization and advanced retail planning solutions that help small, medium, large, and Fortune 500 companies realize substantial bottom-line results in record time. Logility Voyager Solutions is a complete supply chain management and retail optimization solution that features a performance monitoring architecture and provides supply chain visibility; demand, inventory and replenishment planning; Sales and Operations Planning (S&OP); Integrated Business Planning (IBP); supply and inventory optimization; manufacturing planning and scheduling; retail merchandise planning and allocation; and transportation planning and management. Logility customers include Abercrombie & Fitch, Big Lots, Fender Musical Instruments, Parker Hannifin, Verizon Wireless, and VF Corporation. Logility is a wholly owned subsidiary of American Software, Inc. (NASDAQ: AMSWA), named one of the 100 Most Trustworthy Companies in America by Forbes. For more information about Logility, call 800-762-5207 USA or visit http://www.logility.com.
Logility announced Griffith Foods is expanding its use of Logility Voyager Solutions™ to more regions around the world.
Unlike the fifth season, which creepily ended with the Liars trapped inside of A's demented dollhouse, Season 6A of Pretty Little Liars ended on a happier note, with the girls excited about the future and their new A-free lives. Unfortunately, as the brief flash-forward at the end of the episode suggested, all will not remain well for the Liars: according to showrunner I. Marlene King's interview with MTV News, there's a new A in town who is deadlier than ever, and has a very big reason for entering the girls' lives. According to King, "this Big Bad has an agenda, and it’s to find out why [someone] passes away — and to seek revenge on the person responsible... [The Big Bad] will kill people to get that answer." We may be looking at more than one dead character when the show returns — and who will die on Pretty Little Liars may be the first mystery of Season 6B.
While it doesn't seem very likely that A is seeking revenge for the death of a character that we already know (though I suppose it's always a possibility, given the many twists and turns of PLL) this new Big Bad could very well kill a beloved Pretty Little Liars character in order to get back at the girls, or possibly frame them for the murder. So who might die at the hands of the new villain when the series returns? Here are a few ideas:
The Season 6B promo shows that Cece is on the verge of getting out of the mental facility she has been confined to for the past five years. If someone wants to get back at the Liars, killing Cece would be a bold, but logical move: the girls technically do have a motive for wanting Cece dead and A could easily frame them for her murder. It wouldn't be the first time someone tried to get the girls blamed for a former A's murder — Cece pulled the very same trick with Mona's "death." There's some disturbing poetry in the new villain attempting to do the very same thing.
Mona may have been the Original A, but she slowly grew to become the girls' ally — they did everything that they could to try and find out who killed her, even turning on Ali when it seemed like she was the guilty party. Could Mona be the new villain's next target as a way to punish the girls, and perhaps put them back in the horrible head space they were in when they went to Cece's dollhouse?
We still have no idea exactly how Sara got involved with Cece, and if she was the victim of Cece's kidnapping or a willing participant in her crimes. Either way, this girl totally betrayed Emily (enough for Em to punch her square in the face) and is definitely an enemy of the liars, perhaps even more than Cece. If the new villain wants to take down the girls, offing Sara (whom we do see briefly in the Season 6B promo) would be one way to get the police to turn their attention to the girls.
Maybe the death that the new PLL villain wants answers about is actually Bethany. Melissa booked it to London after admitting that she was the one responsible for Bethany being buried alive, but what if the new A finally figured that out and is now out for revenge? This new Big Bad could have killed Melissa after learning she was the one who put Bethany in that hole, and is now seeking out who may have hit her with that shovel. If Melissa does get killed in the new season, Mona may also be on A's hit list.
Pretty Little Liars promises more funerals ahead this season, and every character should watch their backs. This A means business.
Earlier: Early Wednesday morning marked the beginning of a police raid in Paris suburb Saint-Denis, targeting alleged masterminds of the Paris terrorist attacks: Abdelhamid Abaaoud, Salah Abdeslam, and a third possible suspect. As we continue to learn details of the ongoing siege, information is also coming out about the neighborhood where the manhunt is taking place. Where is Saint-Denis, exactly?
The suburb sits about six miles north of Paris' city center. The siege centers on an apartment building where police believe the group of suspected terrorists to be located. The building is also about a mile and a half from the Stade de France, one of the locations of Friday's attacks.
Just over 20 percent of the neighborhood's population in 2011 was listed as "foreigners", according to demographic data reported by UrbiStat. A significant percentage of immigrants in the community come from North Africa. Eighteen percent of the Saint-Denis population as of 2008 were Maghrebi. The commune is also known for its relatively high crime rate. In 2011, Saint-Denis' province, Seine-Saint-Denis, experienced higher levels of both assault and property crimes per 1000 people in comparison to averages for other administrative departments.
Police have ordered Saint-Denis residents to remain inside their homes, behind locked doors, and to stay away from any windows while the raid is ongoing. The town hall is also acting as a temporary shelter for some residents. Transportation into the suburb has been suspended and schools will remain closed on Wednesday.
While some roads were closed at the onset of the operation, about one hundred French troops arrived at the neighborhood to secure the perimeter of the raid several hours after the start of the raid and initial gunfire was reported in the area.
I may be in the minority here, but I absolutely love Elizabeth Banks, and I absolutely love watching tennis. Which is not to say that people hate either Banks or tennis, but they can't possibly love them as much as I do. Thus, you can only imagine how excited I was when I heard the rumor that Elizabeth Banks is in talks to sign on for the role of legendary tennis player Billie Jean King in an upcoming HBO movie. Not only will Banks play the tennis icon, but she might be staring alongside actor Paul Giamatti. Giamatti is said to "be in talks" to play tennis great Bobby Riggs, and the movie is set to focus around the infamous Battle of the Sexes match between King and Riggs that took place in 1973.
The script for the movie hasn't been written yet, but Proof's David Auburn will be at the helm as a writer. Plus there are some major power players producing the film like Tom Hanks, Gary Goetzman, and Banks herself — all the more reason she needs to take on this role. I am so excited for this movie and it hasn't even been written yet. But, even without a script or much else in place, I have plenty of reasons for why Banks should be the film's lead actress.
This just seems like a no-brainer to me. If Banks's production company, Brownstone Productions, and her producing partner, Max Handelman, are already involved in the film, then Banks might as well act. As a producer, she will have the power to make changes to the project and voice her opinion. Banks's role as producer would give her the ability to make sure she is comfortable as an actress.
This film already has some great people on board. First of all, HBO is the king network out of all the premium television channels, with the best of the best working with them. Giamatti is also in talks to star. He has a great reputation as an actor and would bring some credibility to the film. Plus, the producing team includes the one and only Tom Hanks, and everything Hanks touches turns to gold. It would be foolish to turn down this acting role.
The third time could be the charm for Banks and Giamatti. They just collaborated on the Brian Wilson biographical movie Love & Mercy, and they also stared in the Christmas movie Fred Claus. A rapport is important for this character-driven movie, and Giamatti and Banks already know each other well.
I love Banks because she has such a great sense of delivery and has brought a certain charm to all of the roles that she has played. Sadly, her most famous roles have been side parts like in The Hunger Games and Pitch Perfect movies. This movie will give Banks the opportunity to be the lead actress in a dramatic role and show people what she's really made of. She can definitely gain some star power for playing a real person like Billie Jean King.
King is a living, breathing icon. She is known for being more than an incredible tennis player. She is someone who stood up for women's rights and showed people that women can be just as successful as men on and off the tennis court. Playing King in this infamous match against male tennis player Bobby Riggs would be legendary.
Sadly it's 2015 and feminism is still a hot topic that's up for debate. love that people are standing up for women's rights, but I just can't believe it's still a question that women should have equal rights and opportunities to succeed. This movie has the potential to continue this dialogue, and hopefully make true gender equality closer to becoming our reality.
Tennis takes a great amount of athleticism, and the athletes have a short career span because of the toll it takes on the body. It is really a remarkable sport that is entertaining to watch. Making this television movie could spark more people to learn about the history of tennis and to watch the current tournaments.
Television has so much prestige these days. A TV movie on a premium channel has the potential to reach so many people who are watching in the comfort of their own homes. Big movie stars are taking on roles in television movies, mini series, and TV shows. For instance, Oscar winners Matthew McConaughey was on TV in True Detective and Uma Thurman starred in the mini-series The Slap. This could be a big move for Banks to be involved with a prestigious, well done project that can reach more people than a movie theater film could. There are so many great reasons for Elizabeth Banks to commit to this role. I think it has the potential to be a career-changing move and take her to the next level.
Admit it, 2006 was a good year. It was full of viral dance crazes, Laguna Beach was thriving, Rihanna was fresh on the scene — oh, and we also got the first installment of the Step Up saga. I was totally obsessed with the dance flick, and just hearing that there could be a Step Up reunion brings me so much joy. While there's no denying that it led the charge for future dance phenomenons, I have to confess — Step Up definitely wasn't the best of the best. It totally had all of the ingredients for an overtly cliché film, and a ton of awkward and stereotypical happenings, to boot. And to prove my point, I've uncovered all of the ridiculous moments you notice when you rewatch Step Up.
If you haven't set your eyes on Step Up over the past 10 years, I think it's time that you do so. Full disclosure, I wasn't wowed by a lot of the dance sequences this time around. In fact, I found myself cringing at the corniness. But honestly, it's all worth it to witness the onscreen moments that made Jenna Dewan and Channing Tatum fall in love. Hey, I'm a realist, but a total romantic at the end of the day.
A peak part in the storyline is when Tyler and his crew do some damage at the Maryland School of Arts. And when looking back, a couple of clips had me saying, "dis tew much."
OK, so if I'm being honest, all of the fashion throughout this '00s flick is pretty bad. But Skinny's belt is definitely the worst.
I felt it seeping through in the opening title sequence. And... OK, Channing, you can put her down now.
I don't know about you, but I don't remember seeing a janitorial staff member this fine in my high school.
It wouldn't be a romantic drama if the aspiring couple didn't show their audience everything that's at stake.
In every '00s urban flick, there's always a cliché moment where the funny character dies by some senseless act of violence — motivating everyone else in the 'hood to get their lives together. And this scene is it.
But you know what? Knowing that Tyler and Nora lived happily ever after IRL makes reliving these moments all worth it, guys.