Dems to introduce bill setting term limits for Supreme Court justices

Dems to introduce bill setting term limits for Supreme Court justices

U.S. House Democrats will introduce a bill next week to limit the tenure of U.S. Supreme Court justices to 18 years from current lifetime appointments, in a bid to reduce partisan warring over vacancies.

Colette Luke has the latest.

U.S. House Democrats will introduce a bill next week to impose term limits on Supreme Court justices to 18 years from the current lifetime appointments.

The new bill, spearheaded by California Representative Ro Khanna, would allow every president to nominate two justices for every four years in office.

Once the justice's term is up, they would become "senior justices" upon retirement and rotate to lower courts.

The legislation, however, would exempt the current justices from these term limits.

Khanna said the bill was a bid to reduce partisan warring over vacancies, saying quote, "It would save the country a lot of agony and help lower the temperature over fights for the court that go to the fault lines of cultural issues and is one of the primary things tearing at our social fabric." Term limits for high court justices have for years had support from a number of legal scholars on both the right and the left and several polls in recent years have also shown large majorities of the American public support term limits.

Congress by law can set the number of justices, but terms limits may require a change to the Constitution, which has been interpreted as requiring life tenure for federal judges and justices.

The bill comes amid heightened political tensions as Republicans vow to quickly fill the vacancy left by the death of Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg, which would give President Trump his third lifetime appointment to the High Court.