“Judicial appointments should not be partisan weapons in the culture wars.”

Our Proposal:

• Have an independent panel screen and recommend federal judicial candidates 
• Implement term limits for judges, and rotate them into different courts every four years

The Goal:

• Help reduce the politicalization of judicial appointments 
• Achieve judicial diversity to restore credibility to the SCOTUS on down

Explanation:

Judges should be above politics, but sadly this is not the case in America today. In recent years candidates for the federal bench have been nominated by the president and confirmed (or opposed) by senators first and foremost with partisan politics in mind, as can plainly be seen in the increasingly (and ridiculously) confrontational and polarized Senate confirmation hearings. In certain cases candidates for lower federal courts were nominated despite being deemed as “unqualified” by the American Bar Association, having been selected solely based on partisan considerations. This sort of party-first selection process is what you would expect in zero-justice countries like China, Iran, and Venezuela, where judges are put into place according to party loyalty and are expected to dutifully toe the line—with no doubt a grim fate awaiting them should they fail to do so.

The naked politicalization of our federal courts is tragic because it undermines our judiciary, and by extension our democracy. The Supreme Court is the most visible example of this: clearly divided along partisan lines, it is suffering historically low approval and a serious loss of credibility. According to Business Insider, “The Supreme Court is having a credibility crisis as fewer and fewer Americans believe that it is a nonpartisan, unbiased institution.” Supreme Court decisions become meaningless if a majority of the SCOTUS justices operate in lockstep as ideologues of one political party; decisions are credible only if a recognized diversity of judicial philosophies is present. Judicial diversity is therefore crucial for the SCOTUS, as it is for our entire judiciary. Our elected officials should strive to have a healthy variety of judicial viewpoints represented (right, left, and center), not only in the SCOTUS but throughout our courts.

Unlike our hyper-partisan politicians, former Supreme Court justices Anthony Scalia and Ruth Bader Ginsberg understood the need for, and the value of, principled debate between members who bring a true variety of different points of view to the table. While they had sharply contrasting judicial philosophies, they had an excellent working relationship and a famous friendship. Neither one would have wanted nine clones of themselves on the court. They understood that true diversity of opinion helps the SCOTUS better serve the American people, and is essential to maintaining its credibility.

Although it is hard to believe now, both Scalia’s and Ginsberg’s nominations were approved overwhelmingly in the Senate in a bipartisan manner (98-0 for Scalia, 96-3 for Ginsberg). Who can imagine this sort of bipartisan support for a SCOTUS nominee now? What has changed since the Scalia and Ginsberg nominations?

The sad fact of the matter is that the recent extreme politicalization of judicial appointments is a direct result of the increasingly take-no-prisoners culture wars, and the reelection-obsessed-power-addicted politicians (ROPAP’s) who seek to score political points by fanning the flames of division that result from them. The problem is exacerbated by the fact the federal judges enjoy lifetime appointments, making such appointments akin to weapons of mass destruction in the culture wars. When our judges are perceived to be highly partial arbitrators in partisan and cultural conflicts, people lose faith that fairness and true justice are possible. Recently the Supreme Court in particular has not done itself any favors in terms of credibility due to issuing decisions with deadly consistency that fall along the same partisan fault lines that plague our politics today. The present SCOTUS is not only a product of bitter partisanship, the justices are actively involved in it and in fact are contributing to it. Far from being above politics, the SCOTUS justices have become proactive, biased soldiers in the trenches of cultural and partisan warfare—exactly what the nominating "party-first" presidents and their partisan allies had in mind. 

To help reestablish faith in our judiciary, mindless and polarizing politics need to be eliminated as much as possible from the nomination process, and realizing judicial diversity is critical. In addition, term limits need to be enforced, just as in the case with elected officials, to help dampen the all-or-nothing high stakes that federal judicial nominations have become. The Solutions Party therefore proposes the following:

1. Have an independent, non-partisan panel generate a list of diversity-enhancing candidates for nomination by the president, perhaps supplemented by an AI-generated list to provide contrast. While the president cannot (presently) be obligated to choose from the lists of candidates given, hopefully he or she will do so in the public interest. This measure, in combination with a strict one-term limit for elected officials (to take ROPAP’s out of the picture), could go a long way to ending the present circus-like confirmation process, and more importantly help restore credibility to the SCOTUS and the rest of the judiciary. 
2. Establish a 16-year term limit (at most) for federal judicial appointments, and ideally every four years have judges rotated to new courts, again with the goal of realizing judicial diversity 

The Solutions Party recognizes that these proposals may not be popular with those who see winning the culture war as the first priority, and for whom having a judicial system dominated by their hand-picked judges is paramount in order to achieve that. But every American, regardless of political orientation, should ask themselves: which is more important, “winning” the culture wars, or having a healthy democracy? If our democracy collapses, it will probably never recover. Winning the culture wars is impossible: even if one side “wins”, sooner than later new vicious cultural fault lines and battles will start as former allies turn on each other over differences that were previously overlooked. A never-ending, downward cycle to nowhere.  

The issues around the culture wars are important and need to be debated and addressed, but to stop the dangerous erosion of our democracy, we must find ways to greatly tone down the out-of-control emotions, and in no circumstances should they be the basis for selecting judges. Diversity of points of view is America's greatest strength; we squelch it at our peril, especially in our judicial system. 

Let’s restore faith in our courts, from the SCOTUS on down, and in doing so enhance the robustness of our democracy.