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Monday, March 20, 2006

Interesting Thoughts on Judicial Tenure

Mark Graber

Those interested in the recent debates over a life tenure judiciary should take into consideration a finding by Justin Crowe anad Christopher Karpowitz, two graduate students in the Princeton Department of Politics. In a paper presented at the Western Political Science Association they assert with some evidence that the reason for the dramatic increase in the length of judicial tenure is at least as much the result of the decline of the short term judge, the judge who, like Goldberg, serves less than 8 years, than an increase in justices staying on longer than 20 years (though they recognize this has also increased). An interesting observation. In particular, the evidence seems to be that increased length of tenure is the result of better medicine (justices live longer because everyone is living longer and they no longer ride circuit) and more job satisfaction (maybe the office is more powerful, maybe the practice of appointing only federal circuit justices results in people who, unlike Hughes and Byrnes, have no other ambitions). Brief thoughts to consider when debating life tenure.

Comments:

maybe the practice of appointing only federal circuit justices results in people who, unlike Hughes and Byrnes, have no other ambitions)

Perhaps, though some Justices like Hugo Black and Earl Warren came out of party politics and electoral positions but stayed on the Court for a long time anyway.
 

How much credence is given to the "less work" aspect of job satisfaction? Has the increase in reliance on the clerk system that started ... oh, I don't know when it started, let's say 1980, led to an increase in job satisfaction for federal judges.
 

What do you think of tie-breaking votes cast postumously by life tenured judges? See HB's article recently http://www.law.com/jsp/article.jsp?id=1140170716316 "Dead Judges Voting: When Does Life Tenure End?". Talk about taking a good idea a lot too far.
 

Life is what happens to you while you're busy making other plans.
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