Supreme Court Reform (Term Limits & Expansion)

The U.S. is the only major democracy that gives its highest court justices lifetime appointments with no enforceable ethics code — and the result is a politicized, unaccountable institution with historically low public trust.

Last updated: March 11, 2026

Domain

Governance → Judicial Branch → Supreme Court Structure & Accountability

Position

Life tenure on the Supreme Court is a global anomaly that has turned the court into a hyper-politicized institution where a single death or retirement can reshape American law for a generation. Term limits, an enforceable ethics code, and — if necessary — expansion are democratic reforms supported by supermajorities of Americans, including majorities of Republicans.

Supreme Court approval hit a near-historic low of 43% in 2024 and hasn’t recovered. ProPublica investigations revealed that Justice Thomas accepted millions in undisclosed luxury travel and gifts from billionaire Republican donor Harlan Crow, and Justice Alito flew flags associated with the January 6th “Stop the Steal” movement at his homes while refusing to recuse from related cases. The court adopted an ethics code in response — with no enforcement mechanism. Meanwhile, the average Supreme Court tenure since 1993 has reached 28 years, more than double the norm in peer democracies.

Key Terms

  • Life Tenure: Article III of the Constitution states that federal judges “shall hold their Offices during good Behaviour,” which has been interpreted as lifetime appointment. The Framers intended this to insulate judges from political pressure, but in the 18th century, average life expectancy was roughly 35–40 years and the average Supreme Court tenure was under 15 years. Modern justices routinely serve 25–35 years — a duration the Framers never anticipated.

  • Court Packing / Court Expansion: Adding seats to the Supreme Court beyond the current nine. The number of justices is set by statute, not the Constitution, and has changed seven times in history (ranging from 5 to 10). FDR’s 1937 attempt to expand the court is the most famous precedent. Modern proposals typically suggest expanding to 13 (matching the number of federal circuit courts) to rebalance what advocates view as a court distorted by norm-breaking during the confirmation process.

  • 18-Year Term Limits: The most widely discussed reform proposal, endorsed by Biden’s Presidential Commission and backed by 78% of Americans in polling. Each president would appoint one justice every two years for a fixed 18-year term. After their term, justices would rotate to lower federal courts (preserving the “good Behaviour” clause). This produces a predictable, depoliticized cycle where every president gets two appointments per term.

Scope

  • Focus: Structural reforms to the Supreme Court — primarily term limits and enforceable ethics, with expansion as a secondary option — and the evidence from how peer democracies structure their highest courts
  • Timeframe: The current legitimacy crisis (2020–2026), the Biden commission recommendations, and the long-term trend of increasing tenure and politicization
  • What this is NOT about: Whether specific Supreme Court decisions are correct or incorrect — this page argues that the structure is broken regardless of whether you agree with recent rulings. A conservative who wants Dobbs upheld and a liberal who wants it overturned should both want a court with term limits, ethics enforcement, and democratic accountability

The Case

1. Life Tenure Makes the U.S. a Global Outlier — and Not in a Good Way

The Point: No other major democracy gives its highest court justices lifetime appointments. The U.S. system is an anomaly, and countries with term-limited courts score higher on judicial independence, not lower.

The Evidence:

  • No other major constitutional democracy provides life tenure for its highest court. Nearly all impose fixed, nonrenewable terms — typically 9–15 years. Germany’s Federal Constitutional Court: 12-year terms. France’s Constitutional Council: 9-year terms. Italy’s Constitutional Court: 9-year terms. South Africa: 12-year terms (Brennan Center for Justice, 2024).
  • Five countries score higher than the U.S. on measures of high court independence, including Switzerland (6-year terms), Portugal (9-year terms), and Australia, Norway, and Sweden — all of which impose mandatory retirement ages producing average tenures of 11–15 years (Brennan Center / World Justice Project).
  • The average Supreme Court tenure since 1993 has reached 28 years — more than double the average in peer democracies and nearly double the average tenure of justices in earlier American history (American Academy of Arts & Sciences, 2024).

The Logic: The argument for life tenure rests on judicial independence — but the countries with more independent courts all use term limits. Life tenure doesn’t produce independence; it produces entrenchment. When a single justice can shape constitutional law for three decades, the stakes of each appointment become existential, which is precisely what has made confirmations so politicized. Term limits lower the stakes of each appointment because no single justice holds power for a generation. That’s not weakening the court — it’s normalizing it.

Why It Matters: The “life tenure protects independence” argument is the foundation of opposition to reform. Demolishing it with comparative evidence — showing that term-limited courts are actually more independent — removes the principled objection and leaves only partisanship.

2. The Ethics Crisis Is Real and Self-Inflicted

The Point: Supreme Court justices operate under fewer ethical constraints than any other public officials in the federal government — including the judges who serve beneath them — and recent scandals have demonstrated that this lack of oversight produces exactly the corruption you’d expect.

The Evidence:

  • ProPublica reported that Justice Clarence Thomas accepted over two decades of undisclosed luxury travel, private jet flights, yacht vacations, and club memberships from billionaire Republican donor Harlan Crow — including trips to Indonesia on a superyacht, the Bohemian Grove retreat, and private jet travel, potentially worth millions of dollars. Thomas also failed to disclose that Crow paid private school tuition exceeding $6,000/month for a boy Thomas was raising (ProPublica, 2023–2024).
  • Justice Samuel Alito flew an inverted American flag — a symbol of the “Stop the Steal” movement — at his home less than two weeks after January 6, and an “Appeal to Heaven” flag (also carried by Capitol rioters) at his beach house. He refused to recuse from January 6 and 2020 election cases despite calls from both parties (New York Times / CNN / NPR, 2024).
  • The court adopted an ethics code in November 2023 — the first in its history — but it contains no enforcement mechanism, no independent investigatory body, and relies entirely on self-policing by the justices themselves (Common Cause / SCOTUSblog).

The Logic: Every other federal judge in the country is bound by the Code of Conduct for United States Judges, enforced by the Judicial Conference. Members of Congress are subject to ethics investigations by the Office of Congressional Ethics. Executive branch officials face inspectors general. Supreme Court justices answer to no one. An ethics code without enforcement is a press release, not a policy. When a justice accepts millions in undisclosed gifts from a party with interests before the court and faces zero consequences, the system isn’t self-correcting — it’s self-protecting.

Why It Matters: Public trust in the court has collapsed to 43% — near its all-time low — and the ethics scandals are a primary driver. An institution whose power derives entirely from legitimacy (the court has no enforcement mechanism of its own — it relies on the other branches complying with its rulings) cannot sustain historically low public trust indefinitely without consequences.

3. The Confirmation Process Has Become a Constitutional Crisis

The Point: Life tenure has made Supreme Court nominations so high-stakes that the confirmation process has devolved into raw power politics — and the resulting norms collapse has already produced a court that a majority of Americans view as illegitimate.

The Evidence:

  • Senate Republicans blocked President Obama’s nomination of Merrick Garland for 293 days in 2016, arguing that a vacancy shouldn’t be filled in an election year — then confirmed Justice Amy Coney Barrett just 8 days before the 2020 election (Senate records).
  • Three of the current nine justices were nominated by a president who lost the popular vote (George W. Bush nominated Roberts and Alito; Trump nominated Gorsuch, Kavanaugh, and Barrett — Trump lost the popular vote in 2016). Five of the six conservative justices were confirmed by senators representing a minority of the population (FiveThirtyEight / Brennan Center analysis).
  • 78% of Americans support term limits for Supreme Court justices, including 89% of Democrats and 56% of Republicans. Even court expansion — the more polarizing proposal — draws majority support among Democrats (59%) and growing support among independents (Fox News / YouGov / PRRI, 2024–2025).

The Logic: The Garland-Barrett sequence broke the system. When one party can block a nomination for 293 days by invoking a “rule” that doesn’t exist, then abandon that rule four years later when it’s advantageous, the confirmation process is no longer about qualifications — it’s about power. Life tenure makes this inevitable because each seat controls constitutional interpretation for decades. Under 18-year terms, every president gets two appointments per four-year term, on a predictable schedule. No more strategic retirements, no more deathbed stakes, no more incentive to block nominations — because the next appointment is always two years away.

Why It Matters: The court’s legitimacy depends on the public believing it’s a legal institution, not a political one. When the composition of the court is determined by tactical games about timing rather than the merits of nominees, that perception collapses. And it has — 43% approval is not a functioning legitimacy rate for the institution that serves as the final arbiter of constitutional rights.

4. 78% of Americans Support Term Limits — Including a Majority of Republicans

The Point: Supreme Court term limits enjoy the kind of supermajority bipartisan support that almost no other policy reform achieves in modern American politics.

The Evidence:

  • 78% of Americans support term limits, up 12 points from 2022, with support spanning 89% of Democrats, 66% of independents, and 56% of Republicans (Fox News poll, July 2024).
  • 75% of Americans support term limits in a PRRI survey (August–September 2025). An Annenberg survey found 68% support (2024). Multiple polls using different methodologies converge on the same finding: this is one of the most popular structural reforms in American politics.
  • 86% of Democrats and 62% of Republicans support an enforceable ethics code for the justices — an even broader consensus than term limits (PRRI, 2025).

The Logic: In a political environment where bipartisan agreement on virtually anything is rare, 78% support for term limits is extraordinary. This isn’t a progressive wish-list item — it’s a consensus position that a majority of every political cohort supports. The only constituency that opposes it is the justices themselves and the political operatives who benefit from the current high-stakes system. When 56% of Republicans support a reform that would limit the power of a 6-3 conservative court, that signals something beyond partisan calculation — it signals genuine belief that the system is broken.

Why It Matters: The “court packing” framing — which opponents use to dismiss all reform — doesn’t apply to term limits. This isn’t one party trying to rig the court; it’s a supermajority of the country demanding an institution that functions like every other democracy’s highest court. Ignoring 78% support isn’t principled constitutionalism — it’s minority rule.

Counterpoints & Rebuttals

Counterpoint 1: “Life tenure protects judicial independence — term limits would politicize the court”

Objection: The whole point of life tenure is to insulate justices from political pressure. If justices know their term ends, they’ll angle for their next career — lobbying, law firms, media. Term limits would make them accountable to political interests instead of the Constitution. The Framers designed life tenure deliberately.

Response: The Framers also designed a system where average tenure was 15 years and justices didn’t live to 90. The argument that life tenure protects independence is empirically testable — and it fails. Five countries score higher than the U.S. on judicial independence measures, and all of them use term limits or mandatory retirement. Germany’s Constitutional Court, widely regarded as one of the most independent and respected courts in the world, uses 12-year nonrenewable terms. “Nonrenewable” is the key word: justices who can’t be reappointed have no incentive to curry favor. As for “next career” — nonrenewable terms with rotation to lower federal courts (the leading proposal) mean justices continue serving as judges. They don’t enter the private sector.

Follow-up: “But the current system has worked for over 200 years — why change it now?”

Second Response: It hasn’t worked for 200 years — it’s worked differently across different eras. Average tenure was 16 years in the early republic and has ballooned to 28 years since 1993. The confirmation process was largely nonpartisan until the modern era. What changed is that justices now serve far longer, the court’s power has expanded dramatically, and the stakes of each appointment have become so enormous that they’ve broken the confirmation process. The Garland blockade and the Barrett rush wouldn’t have happened under 18-year terms because the incentive structure would be completely different. The system hasn’t been stable for 200 years; it’s been deteriorating for 40, and the current crisis is the result.

Counterpoint 2: “Court expansion is just court packing — it’s a power grab by Democrats”

Objection: Expanding the court to add justices is exactly what FDR tried in 1937, and even his own party rejected it as a dangerous precedent. If Democrats expand the court to 13, Republicans will expand it to 17 next time they’re in power. It’s an arms race that would destroy the court’s independence entirely. The number nine has been stable since 1869 — leave it alone.

Response: The number nine has been stable, but the process for filling those nine seats has been shattered. When one party can block a nomination for nearly a year and then rush one through in weeks, the composition of the court is already determined by raw power politics — expansion would just make the power grab explicit rather than hiding behind procedural manipulation. That said, expansion is the more aggressive option and should be treated as a last resort. Term limits and ethics reform address most of the structural problems without the escalation risks of expansion. The strongest case for expansion isn’t partisan rebalancing — it’s institutional: 13 justices matching 13 circuits would reduce the outsized influence of any single justice and allow the court to hear more cases (it currently hears fewer than 80 per year, down from 150 in the 1980s).

Follow-up: “So even you admit expansion is dangerous — then take it off the table”

Second Response: The threat of expansion is part of what creates political space for less drastic reforms. If term limits and enforceable ethics can pass, expansion isn’t necessary. But if the court’s legitimacy continues to erode and the structural problems go unaddressed, expansion becomes the fallback — not because it’s ideal, but because a court that’s lost public trust and operates without accountability is a more dangerous outcome than a larger court. The best argument against expansion is to pass the reforms that make it unnecessary.

Counterpoint 3: “This is just sour grapes because liberals lost the court — you wouldn’t want reform if you had a 6-3 majority”

Objection: Democrats didn’t care about court reform when they had a liberal majority. This sudden interest in “structural reform” is transparently motivated by the fact that the conservative majority is overturning precedents they disagree with. If the court were 6-3 liberal, no one on the left would be calling for term limits.

Response: Two things can be true simultaneously: the current reform push is motivated partly by political frustration and the structural problems are real. The fact that a crisis catalyzes reform doesn’t make the reform wrong. Term limits were proposed by legal scholars decades before the current conservative majority — a 2005 proposal by prominent law professors from across the political spectrum predates the Obama and Trump presidencies. And the polling shows this isn’t just liberal frustration: 56% of Republicans support term limits. When a majority of the party that currently benefits from the 6-3 majority still supports structural reform, the “sour grapes” explanation doesn’t hold. Something deeper is broken.

Follow-up: “But conservatives supported norms when they didn’t have the majority — this is just each side wanting reform when they’re losing”

Second Response: Then both sides should support a structural fix that works regardless of who’s winning. That’s the beauty of 18-year term limits: they’re ideology-neutral. Every president gets two appointments per term, on a predictable schedule, regardless of party. The reform doesn’t advantage Democrats or Republicans — it advantages democratic legitimacy. If you’d support term limits when your side is losing, you should support them when your side is winning, because the current system’s dysfunction will eventually swing back. A conservative who opposes term limits today is betting that the 6-3 majority will last forever. It won’t — and when it doesn’t, they’ll wish the system had been reformed.

Common Misconceptions

Misconception 1: “Term limits would require a constitutional amendment — it’s impossible”

Reality: The leading legal scholarship argues that term limits can be implemented by statute, without a constitutional amendment. Article III guarantees judges “good Behaviour” tenure, but it doesn’t specify which court they sit on. Under the 18-year term limit proposal, justices would rotate to senior status on lower federal courts after their Supreme Court term ends — still serving as judges with full pay and protections, just no longer on the highest court. The Brennan Center, the American Academy of Arts & Sciences, and multiple constitutional law scholars have endorsed this interpretation. It’s untested, and a legal challenge is likely, but “it’s impossible” overstates the constitutional barrier.

Misconception 2: “The court has always had nine justices — changing the number is unprecedented”

Reality: The number of Supreme Court justices has been changed by Congress seven times: 6 in 1789, 5 in 1801, 7 in 1807, 9 in 1837, 10 in 1863, 7 in 1866, and 9 in 1869. The Constitution does not specify a number. Nine has been the standard for over 150 years, which gives it significant weight as a norm, but describing it as constitutionally fixed is incorrect.

Misconception 3: “The ethics code the court adopted in 2023 solved the accountability problem”

Reality: The 2023 ethics code has no enforcement mechanism, no independent investigative body, and no consequences for violations. Justices self-assess their own compliance. After the code was adopted, neither Thomas nor Alito faced any investigation, sanction, or penalty for the disclosed ethics violations. Every other federal judge is subject to the Judicial Conference’s enforceable Code of Conduct. An ethics code that relies on the honor system for people who have already demonstrated they won’t honor it is not an ethics code — it’s a press release.

Rhetorical Tips

Do Say

“Every other major democracy limits terms for their highest court justices. Germany does it. France does it. Italy does it. The countries with term limits actually score higher on judicial independence. We’re the outlier — and not in a good way.” The global comparison is the strongest opening because it’s factual and nonpartisan.

Don’t Say

“Pack the court” — even if you support expansion, the phrase triggers instant opposition. Say “expand” or “rebalance.” Also avoid leading with specific decisions (Dobbs, Bruen, etc.) — it turns the conversation into a debate about those rulings rather than the structural problem. Keep it on the system, not the outcomes.

When the Conversation Goes Off the Rails

Come back to the 78% number and the bipartisan support. “78% of Americans support term limits — including 56% of Republicans. This isn’t a partisan issue. It’s a democracy issue.” When someone frames reform as a power grab, the polling reframes it as popular will.

Know Your Audience

  • Persuadable moderates: Lead with the global comparison (every other democracy has term limits), the 78% polling, and the ethics scandal. Moderates respond to “the system is broken and most people agree” framing.
  • Informed allies: Focus on the Garland-Barrett hypocrisy, the statutory path to term limits (no amendment needed), and the connection between ethics enforcement and democratic legitimacy.
  • Hostile interlocutors: Use the “insurance policy” frame: “Your side has the 6-3 majority now. It won’t last forever. When a Democratic president gets three appointments in one term because of lucky timing — the way Trump did — you’ll wish the system had been reformed. Term limits protect both sides from the randomness of death and retirement determining constitutional law for a generation.”

Key Quotes & Soundbites

“No other major democracy gives its highest court justices lifetime appointments. The countries with term limits score higher on judicial independence. We’re not protecting independence — we’re protecting entrenchment.”

“78% of Americans support term limits for the Supreme Court — including 56% of Republicans. When was the last time 78% of Americans agreed on anything?”

“Justice Thomas accepted millions in undisclosed gifts from a billionaire with business before the court. The ethics code adopted in response has no enforcement mechanism. In any other branch of government, this would end a career. On the Supreme Court, it doesn’t even trigger an investigation.”

“Under 18-year term limits, every president gets two appointments per term, on a predictable schedule. No more strategic retirements. No more deathbed stakes. No more 293-day blockades. Just a regular, democratic process.”

  • Voting Rights & Voter Suppression — The Supreme Court’s Shelby County decision gutted the Voting Rights Act; structural court reform affects every other issue on this site (see: Voting Rights)
  • Abortion Access — Dobbs was decided by a court shaped by the Garland blockade and the Barrett rush; reform proposals would prevent that kind of manipulation (see: Abortion Access)
  • Police Reform & Accountability — Qualified immunity is a court-created doctrine with no statutory basis; a differently structured court might revisit it (see: Police Reform & Accountability)

Sources & Further Reading