Reply #8: The flip side is that you're deprived of decades from good justices

[AlGore-08.com]

IMNSHO legislative term limits should be viewed as a cautionary model. We have legislative term limits out here in Cali and they've deprived us of a lot of good, progressive legislators like Tom Hayden, who were term limited out of office to be replaced by lesser lights. The new crew know that they have to find a new job in a set amount of time and are even more focused on elections on fund raising than the pre-term limit crowd was.

What are Supreme Court Justices going to move on to if we term limit them? Lobbyist? Elective office? How many of them are going to see the Supreme Court as a political stepping stone - - really start legislating from the bench, in order to boost their future image as a "Law and Order" candidate or a "Traditional Values" candidate?

Also, term limits for Supreme Court Justices is the same kind of "throw the baby out with the bathwater" solution that the nuclear option is - - we will not always be in the minority. Someday we will control the nominating process, and we shouldn't kneecap ourselves then to kneecap the GOP now.

Imagine that the Dems win back the Senate majority in 2006 (possible although not a lock) and either Smirk is forced to submit a Senate candidate they want. Or imagine that the confirmation hearings drag out until after the 2008 election is over, then a Democrat wins the White House (possible but far from certain). The Dem President then submits two nominees to swing the court to the left.

But back to the original topic: I also think that packing the Court would be difficult to justify, unless the Extreme Court issues a huge number of extremely unpopular opinions between now and whenever we control the nominating process again.