Hostname: page-component-586b7cd67f-t7fkt Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-11-26T11:59:21.476Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Where Have You Gone, Sherman Minton? The Decline of the Short-Term Supreme Court Justice

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  16 August 2007

Justin Crowe  and
Christopher F. Karpowitz
Justin Crowe
Affiliation:
Pomona College, E-mail: justin.crowe@pomona.edu
Christopher F. Karpowitz
Affiliation:
Brigham Young University, E-mail: karpowtz@byu.edu
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract

Against the backdrop of a decade-long wait for a Supreme Court vacancy, legal academics from across the political spectrum have recently proposed or supported significant constitutional or statutory reforms designed to limit the terms of Supreme Court justices and increase the pace of turnover at the Court. Fearing a Court that is increasingly out of touch with the national mood and staffed by justices of advanced age, advocates of term and age limits contend that the trend in Supreme Court tenures is inexorably upward. But are Supreme Court justices really serving longer now than in the past? If so, why? And what might such trends mean for American constitutional democracy? In a debate otherwise dominated by law professors—and largely without careful empirical analysis—we place the issue of judicial tenure in historical perspective, with special attention to the institutional development of the Court, the changing politics of the appointments process and the types of individuals who emerge from it, and to a lesser extent, broader socio-demographic trends in technology and medicine. In the process, we show how proponents of reforms designed to end life tenure have ignored a significant factor influencing patterns in judicial service: the decline of the “short-term” justice. Trends in judicial tenure, we argue, cannot be explained by more justices serving unusually long terms; rather, they are driven at least in part by the fact that fewer justices are serving relatively short terms. In this article, we consider why justices have retired after only short service throughout much of history, why they rarely do so today, the conditions under which future justices might be compelled to serve shorter terms, and the democratic gains and losses associated with short-term service on the Court. In sum, by following the rise and fall of the short-term justice over the course of American political development, we offer a new perspective, grounded in political science, on an issue currently occupying the attention of lawyers, journalists, and policymakers alike.Justin Crowe is Assistant Professor of Politics, Pomona College (justin.crowe@pomona.edu). Christopher F. Karpowitz is Assistant Professor of Political Science, Brigham Young University (karpowtz@byu.edu). We thank Chris Achen, Steve Burbank, Chris Eisgruber, Mark Graber, Ken Kersch, Kevin McGuire, David Stras, Keith Whittington, and two anonymous reviewers for encouragement and helpful feedback. An earlier version of this article was presented at the 2006 annual meeting of the Western Political Science Association, Albuquerque, NM.

Type
Research Article
Information
Perspectives on Politics , Volume 5 , Issue 3 , September 2007 , pp. 425 - 445
Copyright
© 2007 American Political Science Association

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

Abraham, Henry J. 1992. Justices and Presidents: A Political History of Appointments to the Supreme Court. 3d ed. New York: Oxford University Press.
Ackerman, Bruce A. 1988. Transformative appointments. Harvard Law Review 101 (6): 1164–184.Google Scholar
Ackerman, Bruce A. 1991. We the People: Foundations. Cambridge, MA: Belknap Press.
Ackerman, Bruce A. 1998. We the People: Transformations. Cambridge, MA: Belknap Press.
Atkinson, David N. 1999. Leaving the Bench: Supreme Court Justices at the End. Lawrence, KS: University Press of Kansas.
Balkin, Jack M., and Sanford Levinson. 2001. Understanding the constitutional revolution. Virginia Law Review 87 (6): 1045–104.Google Scholar
Baum, Lawrence. 1992. Membership change and collective voting change in the United States Supreme Court. Journal of Politics 54 (1): 3–24.Google Scholar
Biskupic, Joan. 1994. “‘I Am Not an Uncle Tom,’ Thomas Says at Meeting; Justice Speaks to Select Group of Blacks.” Washington Post, October 28, First Section.
Brennan, William J. 1986. Address to the Text and Teaching Symposium at Georgetown University. In The Great Debate: Interpreting Our Written Constitution. Washington, DC: The Federalist Society.
Burbank, Stephen. 2006. An interdisciplinary perspective on the tenure of Supreme Court justices. In Reforming the Court: Term Limits for Supreme Court Justices, ed. Roger C. Cramton and Paul D. Carrington. Durham, NC: Carolina Academic Press.
Burnham, Walter Dean. 1970. Critical Elections and the Mainsprings of American Politics. New York: Norton.
Calabresi, Steven G., and James T. Lindgren. 2006. Term limits for the Supreme Court: Life tenure reconsidered. Harvard Journal of Law and Public Policy 29 (3): 769–877.Google Scholar
Calabresi, Steven G., and David C. Presser. 2006. Reintroducing circuit riding: A timely proposal. Minnesota Law Review 90 (5): 1386–416.Google Scholar
Caldeira, Gregory A., and James L. Gibson. 1992. The etiology of public support for the Supreme Court. American Journal of Political Science 36 (3): 635–64.Google Scholar
Carrington, Paul, and Roger C. Cramton. 2006. Reforming the Supreme Court: An introduction. In Reforming the Court: Term Limits for Supreme Court Justices, ed. Roger C. Cramton and Paul D. Carrington. Durham, NC: Carolina Academic Press.
Caspar, Gerhard, and Richard A. Posner. 1976. The Workload of the Supreme Court. Chicago: American Bar Foundation.
Comiskey, Michael. 2004. Seeking Justices: The Judging of Supreme Court Nominees. Lawrence, KS: University Press of Kansas.
Covitz, Akiba J. 2006. Courting justices and courting votes: LBJ, Thurgood Marshall, and the search for “Eureka!” Law and Courts 16 (2): 5–18.Google Scholar
Cramton, Roger C., and Paul D. Carrington, eds. 2006. Reforming the Court: Term Limits for Supreme Court Justices. Durham, NC: Carolina Academic Press.
Cushman, Barry. 1998. Rethinking the New Deal Court: The Structure of a Constitutional Revolution. New York: Oxford University Press.
Dahl, Robert. 1957. Decision-making in a democracy: The Supreme Court as a national policy maker. Journal of Public Law 6 (2): 279–95.Google Scholar
Davis, Richard. 2005. Electing Justice: Fixing the Supreme Court Nomination Process. New York: Oxford University Press.
Dean, John. 2001. “When Supreme Court Justices Refuse to Retire: Why We Need More Media Coverage, and a Constitutional Amendment.” http://writ.news.findlaw.com/dean/20010720.html. Accessed on January 25, 2007.
Eisgruber, Christopher L. 2001. Constitutional Self-Government. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.
Ely, John Hart. 1980. Democracy and Distrust: A Theory of Judicial Review. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.
Epstein, Lee et al. 1994. The Supreme Court Compendium: Data, Decisions, and Developments. Washington, DC: Congressional Quarterly.
Epstein, Lee, Jack Knight, and Andrew Martin. 2003. The norm of prior judicial experience and its consequences for career diversity on the U.S. Supreme Court. California Law Review 91 (4): 903–66.Google Scholar
Farnsworth, Ward. 2005. The regulation of turnover on the Supreme Court. University of Illinois Law Review 2005 (2): 407–54.Google Scholar
Flemming, Roy B., and B. Dan Wood. 1997. The public and the Supreme Court: Individual justice responsiveness to American policy moods. American Journal of Political Science 41 (2): 468–98.Google Scholar
Freeman, Landa. 2006. Mr. Jay rides circuit. Journal of Supreme Court History 31 (1): 18–27.Google Scholar
Garrow, David J. 2000. “Mental decrepitude on the U.S. Supreme Court: The historical case for a 28th Amendment. University of Chicago Law Review 67 (4): 995–1087.Google Scholar
Gates, John B. 1991. The Supreme Court and Partisan Realignment: A Macro- and Microlevel Perspective. Boulder, CO: Westview Press.
Gillman, Howard, and Cornell Clayton, eds. 1999. The Supreme Court in American Politics: New Institutionalist Interpretations. Lawrence, KS: University Press of Kansas.
Glick, Joshua. 2003. On the road: The Supreme Court and the history of circuit riding. Cardozo Law Review 24 (4): 1753–843.Google Scholar
Goldman, Sheldon. 1997. Picking Federal Judges: Lower Court Selection from Roosevelt through Reagan. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press.
Graber, Mark A. 2005. “The Jacksonian Makings of the Taney Court.” University of Maryland Legal Studies Research Paper No. 2005-63. Available at SSRN: http://ssrn.com/abstract=842184.
Greenhouse, Linda. 2005. “How Long Is Too Long For the Court's Justices?” New York Times, January 16, Section 4.
Greenhouse, Linda. 2006. “Case of the Dwindling Docket Mystifies the Supreme Court.” New York Times, December 7, Section A.
Hagle, Timothy M. 1993. Strategic retirements: A political model of turnover on the United States Supreme Court. Political Behavior 15 (1): 25–48.Google Scholar
Hensley, Thomas R., and Christopher E. Smith. 1995. Membership change and voting change: An analysis of the Rehnquist Court's 1986–1991 terms. Political Research Quarterly 48 (4): 837–56.Google Scholar
Hibbing, John R., and Elizabeth Theiss-Morse. 1995. Congress as Public Enemy: Public Attitudes toward American Political Institutions. New York: Cambridge University Press.
Klarman, Michael J. 1990. Rethinking the civil rights and civil liberties revolution. Virginia Law Review 82 (1): 1–67.Google Scholar
Leuchtenburg, William E. 1995. The Supreme Court Reborn: Constitutional Revolution in the Age of Roosevelt. New York: Oxford University Press.
Levinson, Sanford. 2001. “Return of Legal Realism.” The Nation, January 8, 8.
Levinson, Sanford. 2003. “Why I Did Not Sign the Constitution: With a Chance to Endorse It, I Had to Decline.” http://writ.news.findlaw.com/commentary/20030923_levinson.html. Accessed on April 17, 2006.
Maltese, John Anthony. 1995. The Selling of Supreme Court Nominees. Baltimore: The Johns Hopkins University Press.
Mansbridge, Jane J. 1983. Beyond Adversary Democracy. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
Mauro, Tony. 2005. “Roots Grow Deeper on the Supreme Court.” USA Today, January 13, Section A.
Mayhew, David R. 2002. Electoral Realignments: A Critique of an American Genre. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press.
McCloskey, Robert G. 2005. The American Supreme Court. 4th ed. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
McGuire, Kevin T. 2004. The institutionalization of the U.S. Supreme Court. Political Analysis 12 (2): 128–42.Google Scholar
McGuire, Kevin T. 2005. Are the justices serving too long? An assessment of tenure on the U.S. Supreme Court. Judicature 89 (1): 8–15.Google Scholar
McGuire, Kevin T., and James A. Stimson. 2004. The least dangerous branch revisited: New evidence on Supreme Court responsiveness to public preferences. Journal of Politics 66 (4): 1018–35.Google Scholar
Mishler, William, and Reginald S. Sheehan. 1993. The Supreme Court as a countermajoritarian institution? The impact of public opinion on Supreme Court decisions. American Political Science Review 87 (1): 87–101.Google Scholar
Mishler, William, and Reginald S. Sheehan. 1996. Public opinion, the attitudinal model, and Supreme Court decision making: A micro-analytic perspective. Journal of Politics 58 (1): 169–200.Google Scholar
Mutz, Diana C. 2002. Cross-cutting social networks: Testing democratic theory in practice. American Political Science Review 96 (1): 111–26.Google Scholar
National Center for Health Statistics. 2007. National Vital Statistics Report. http://www.cdc.gov/nchs/nvss.htm. Accessed on February 19, 2007.
Neustadt, Richard. 1990. Presidential Power and the Modern Presidents: The Politics of Leadership from Roosevelt to Reagan. New York: Free Press.
O'Brien, David M. 2000. Storm Center: The Supreme Court in American Politics. 5th ed. New York: W.W. Norton & Co.
Orren, Karen, and Stephen Skowronek. 2004. The Search for American Political Development. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Pacelle, Richard L. Jr. 1991. The Transformation of the Supreme Court's Agenda: From the New Deal to the Reagan Administration. Boulder, CO: Westview Press.
Peretti, Terri Jennings. 2001. In Defense of a Political Court. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.
Perry, H.W. 1991. Decide to Decide: Agenda Setting in the United States Supreme Court. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.
Pettit, Philip. 2000. Democracy: Electoral and contestatory. In Designing Democratic Institutions, NOMOS XLII, ed. Ian Shapiro and Stephen Macedo. New York: NYU Press.
Pickerill, J. Mitchell, and Cornell W. Clayton. 2004. The Rehnquist court and the political dynamics of Federalism. Perspectives on Politics 2 (2): 233–48.Google Scholar
Pierson, Paul. 2004. Politics in Time: History, Institutions, and Social Analysis. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.
Powe, Lucas A. Jr. 2000. The Warren Court and American Politics. Cambridge, MA: Belknap Press.
Provine, Doris Marie. 1980. Case Selection in the United States Supreme Court. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
Rosen, Jeffrey. 2007. “Roberts's Rules.” Atlantic Monthly. January/February. http://www.theatlantic.com/doc/200701/john-roberts. Accessed February 19, 2007.
Ruckman, P.S. Jr. 1993. The Supreme Court, critical nominations, and the Senate confirmation process. Journal of Politics 55 (3): 793–805.Google Scholar
Ruger, Theodore W. 2005. Justice Harry Blackmun and the phenomenon of judicial preference change. Missouri Law Review 70 (4): 1209–30.Google Scholar
Segal, Jeffrey A., and Harold J. Spaeth. 2002. The Supreme Court and the Attitudinal Model Revisited. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Silverstein, Mark. 1994. Judicious Choices: The New Politics of Supreme Court Confirmations. New York: W.W. Norton & Co.
Skowronek, Stephen. 1997. The Politics Presidents Make: Leadership from John Adams to Bill Clinton. 2d ed. Cambridge, MA: Belknap Press.
Spriggs, James F. II, and Paul J. Wahlbeck. 1995. Calling it quits: Strategic retirement on the federal Courts of Appeals, 1893–1991. Political Research Quarterly 48 (3): 573–97.Google Scholar
Squire, Peverill. 1988. Politics and personal factors in retirement from the United States Supreme Court. Political Behavior 10 (2): 180–90.Google Scholar
Stephanopoulos, George. 1999. All Too Human: A Political Education. Boston: Little, Brown.
Stras, David R. 2007. “Why Supreme Court Justices Should Ride Circuit Again.” Minnesota Law Review 91. Available at SSRN: http://ssrn.com/abstract=951219.Google Scholar
Stras, David R., and Ryan W. Scott. 2006. Retaining life tenure: The case for a “golden parachute.” Washington University Law Quarterly 83 (5): 1397–467.Google Scholar
Stras, David R., and Ryan W. Scott. 2007. “An Empirical Analysis of Life Tenure: A Response to Professors Calabresi and Lindgren.” Available at SSRN: http://ssrn.com/abstract=946167.
Sundquist, James L. 1983. Dynamics of the Party System: Alignment and Realignment of Political Parties in the United States. 2d ed. Washington, DC: Brookings Institution.
Sunstein, Cass R. 1993. The Partial Constitution. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.
Taylor, Stuart B. 2005. “Life Tenure Is Too Long for Supreme Court Justices.” National Journal 37 (26): 2033–34.Google Scholar
United States Senate. 2006. Supreme Court Nominations. http://www.senate.gov/pagelayout/reference/nominations/Nominations.htm#confirmed. Accessed on April 17, 2006.
Vining, Richard L. Jr., Christopher Zorn, and Susan Navarro Smelcer. 2006. Judicial tenure on the U.S. Supreme Court, 1789–1868: Frustration, resignation, and expiration on the bench. Studies in American Political Development 20 (2): 198–210.Google Scholar
Waldron, Jeremy. 2001. Law and Disagreement. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Ward, Artemus. 2000. The tenth justice: The retirement of William O. Douglas. Journal of Supreme Court History 25 (3): 296–312.Google Scholar
Ward, Artemus. 2002. An extraconstitutional arrangement: Lyndon Johnson and the fall of the Warren Court. White House Studies 2: 171–83.Google Scholar
Ward, Artemus. 2003. Deciding to Leave: The Politics of Retirement from the Supreme Court. Albany, NY: State University of New York Press, 2003.
Ward, Artemus, and David L. Weiden. 2006. Sorcerer's Apprentice: 100 Years of Law Clerks at the United States Supreme Court. New York: New York University Press.
Whittington, Keith E. 2001. Taking what they give us: Explaining the court's federalism offensive. Duke Law Journal 51 (1): 477–520.Google Scholar
Whittington, Keith E. 2007. Presidents, senates, and failed Supreme Court nominations. Supreme Court Review 2006: 401–438.Google Scholar
Yalof, David Alistair. 1999. Pursuit of Justices: Presidential Politics and the Selection of Supreme Court Nominees. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
Zorn, Christopher J. W., and Steven R. Van Winkle. 2000. A competing risks model of Supreme Court vacancies, 1789–1992. Political Behavior 22 (2): 145–66.Google Scholar