SERVING ONE'S TIME
The sad passing of Chief Justice Rehnquist has prompted me to re-learn some aspects of our Judiciary Branch that I'd forgotten or perhaps never learned.
The first question that came to my mind upon President Bush's re-appointment of Judge Roberts for Chief Justice Rehnquist's position was how unusual is it for a Chief Justice to come from outside the current court?
Turns out, not unusual at all (courtesy Wikipedia). Apparently only 3 of the 16 Chief Justices that the United States has had to date were appointed from within the bench. This of course includes Chief Justice Rehnquist himself, who was elevated to the top slot by President Reagan in 1986. Contrast that to the fact that 9 of our 43 Presidents to date have ascended from the Vice Presidency to the Presidency.
The thing that stopped me in my tracks though was the number of Supreme Court Chief Justices that we've had in 229 years (16), compared with the number of Presidents (43).
This of course may partly due to the fact that our Presidents, since 1951, courtesy of the 22nd amendment, have been limited limited to serving two terms only, whereas Congress (both House and Senate), have no term limits, and Supreme Court Justices serve for life.
The Executive branch is the only one with term limits compared to the other two branches.
I then decided to do some back of the envelope calculations.
The average tenure of a President comes to 5.3 years vs. 14.3 years for a Chief Justice since the birth of the nation. And that's with having NO TERM LIMITS on the Presidency for the first 175 years of the nation's history.
Until 1951, we'd had 33 Presidents, (Harry S. Truman being the 33rd), and 13 Chief Justices (Frederick Moore Vinson being the 13th). It you take the averages up until that point, they come out the roughly the same as after the Presidential term limits, 5.3 years for Presidents vs. 14.4 years for Chief Justices.
That's a bit surprising, indicating perhaps that the effect of the term limits has yet to kick in. Or maybe it's just tough for Presidents to get re-elected more than a couple of times given the national focus on this very important election every four years. A bit tough to hide under that kind of scrutiny.
After all, President Franklin D. Roosevelt was the only one who managed to get elected four times, but obviously under the extraordinary conditions of World War II.
Obviously as average life expectancies go up over the next few decades, the Chief Justices, indeed all Supreme Court Justices likely will serve even longer average terms.
Intuitively I'd have expected the average term of 14ish years to have been longer, but it is a long time by any measure.
Judge Roberts will likely go way past the average, assuming his confirmation, given that at 50, he'll be the second youngest Chief Justice after John Marshall, in 1801, who was appointed at the age of 45.
Watching a four year old interview of Chief Justice Rehnquist on C-Span recently, I remember his answer to a question on age and tenure. Asked what if he thought if being appointed even an Associate Justice to the Supreme Court at 32 (Joseph Story in 1811), the youngest on record was too young, he said he did think it was...not because of the presumed relative inexperience of the candidate, but that potentially serving for decades in any capacity may be too much to ask of an individual.
I guess it's alright do something for a long time as long as your heart is truly in it...I had a two decade plus career with one firm, which is thought somewhat unusual on Wall Street, but I got to do things that I really enjoyed and believed in, with some terrific people.
Another long-standing institution that also has life-time terms is of course the Vatican Papacy. According to Popechart.com, we've had 265 popes since the inception of the institution 2005 years ago...which gives us an average tenure of...7.5 years.
Now that's curious...that the average tenure of a Pope is about half that of a US Supreme Court Chief Justice, despite having almost a 10x advantage in time span, with the same life-time service opportunities. Perhaps it has something to do with the much lower average life expectancies through the ages.
So, as the nation girds itself for a Fall full of legislators debating the pros and cons of Supreme Court appointments, we should remind ourselves that these individuals do have a unique responsibility, obligation and opportunity.
To truly serve the WHOLE nation as it stands now and as it will be in the future, regardless of party affiliations, special interest pressures, and any implied obligations, presumed or real. And to do it consistently well for a really long time.
Obviously, only after the appointment and confirmation circuses are done with of course.
Postscript: By the by, President Bush getting the opportunity to appoint two judges to the Supreme Court so far is not unusual at all, when you consider each of his predecessors had the opportunity to do the same, although none a Chief Justice of course. President Reagan got to appoint three. (From Infoplease: Reagan (O'Connor, Scalia, Kennedy); G.H.W. Bush (Souter, Thomas); Clinton (Ginsburg, Breyer)
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