The Constitution specifies that once federal judges are nominated by the president and confirmed by the Senate, they can hold their office “during good behavior,” in other words for life — unless they’ve misbehaved, that is. But the average American today lives a lot longer today than in 1789, when President George Washington signed the Judiciary Act, establishing America’s court system. In a time when justices may live into their eighties and even nineties, sometimes facing ill-health, advocates of Supreme Court reform maintain there may be constitutional ways to institute term limits. 

In part four of our look at the judiciary, we consider the addition of an independent body to pick cases for the Supreme Court, the role of The Federalist Society and the impact that a lack of diversity in life experience has on our federal judiciary.

The Republican party has not won the majority of votes in six of the last seven presidential elections. And yet vacancies on the Supreme Court have allowed Republican presidents to appoint six of the last ten justices. Does this skew the Court in a way that’s out of step with public opinion? Here we explore the history of “court-packing” as well as a range of other proposals intended to bring greater fairness and political independence to America’s judiciary.

Have our courts – intended by America’s founders to be an independent arbiter of justice – turned into another political battlefield? Are today’s judges mere “politicians in robes”? This public radio documentary series looks at crucial flashpoints in recent decades.

In this divisive climate, will the frequency of 5-4 decisions by the Supreme Court increase, as Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg suggested in June 2019? Will rulings follow the predictable blocs of liberal and conservative justices, strongly associated with the party of the president who appointed them?