It’s obviously in poor taste to wish cancer on anyone, regardless of the reason. I won’t defend that kind of language. But one side effect of lifetime appointments to an increasingly politicized Supreme Court is that the only way people can see for the Court to change from ruling one way to another is if one of the Justices dies or resigns for some reason. New Hampshire Tea Party member Mike Malzone wants all five of the Supreme Court Justices who upheld ObamaCare to get colon cancer. In his case, he denies that he wanted them to die; he just wanted them to suffer. Yet, the sentiment is all-too-natural. Millions of Americans are contemplating issues like abortion rights or the ruling on Citizens United and wondering if anyone on the Court will die and allow a new appointee to the Court to change the law. I think it’s a pretty unhealthy situation.
There’s even a kind of gallows logic to the appointment process. I can easily see President Obama striking a bargain with Republicans on the Senate Judiciary Committee. He would, for example, agree to appoint someone in their seventies in return for enough support to defeat a filibuster. The ideology and record of the appointee might be entirely secondary to the actuarial reality. For the Republicans, better to have a liberal on the Court for a maximum of twenty years than a moderate who might serve for 40 years.
This is a sick and twisted way of thinking about the highest court in the land, but the logic is so compelling that most people find it irresistible. That these are lifetime positions is only part of the problem, of course. The extreme polarization of the parties is an even bigger factor, because too often the Justices just line up predictably along Democratic/Republican lines. With the retirement of Republican-appointed Justices John Paul Stevens and David Souter, this has never been more true. I think this is why a lot of commentators celebrated John Roberts’ surprising move to uphold the Affordable Care Act. Any sign of independence is welcomed.
Yet, anyone who wants to see Citizens United overturned must await the death of one of the conservatives on the Court, which is a corollary for those on the right who want the ObamaCare ruling overturned. Most people are too polite to say this out loud, and certainly too decent to wish suffering on anyone. But we might want to consider a retirement age or a 20-year maximum term for Supreme Court Justices. It’s not healthy to have a nation of people waiting around and sometimes openly hoping for our Supreme Court members to die. It’s not good for our morals.
