Clarence Thomas was interviewed on 60 Minutes tonight. I was still rather young when Thomas was going through his confirmation process and I didn’t realize that he only had about one year of experience as a judge at the time. There were a lot of political machinations that were going on with his nomination. I didn’t really understand them all at the time, but I do remember thinking it was far more of a circus than I thought it should be.

Daniel Solove was commenting recently on the idea of ending life tenure for Supreme Court Justices. His argument was inspired by the New York Times article and contained some of the same kinds of things that I disliked about the Clarence Thomas confirmation hearings. Solove argues that life appointments make the process even more politicized, put pressure on Presidents to nominate inexperienced justices that will be able to serve longer and are dangerous because of the unpredictable nature of which political entity would be in power when a seat comes open.

Life appointments make sense today for the reasons they did when they were initially chosen. The position is too important to have justices worried about what they will do after their time on the bench. Anything that can be done to ensure their independence in decision making should be done. Arguing about life expectancy differences doesn’t make sense to me. Ben Franklin was the perfect example to those writing the Constitution that it was possible a justice could live far longer than average and have an impact on the bench for decades. Regardless of what term limit there is, the process is going to be politicized to no end simply because it’s the Supreme Freaking Court. In the US, this is the last say in all things judicial, so why wouldn’t it become politicized? As for President’s nominating young and inexperienced people to the court, that is a serious problem and it’s out of hand. Youth isn’t nearly as big of an issue as inexperience, but it’s not a Presidential nomination problem so much as it is a confirmation issue. There’s a reason that the Senate has to confirm nominations. If the nomination is young or inexperienced, then the Senate should not confirm the nomination.

I recently read an excellent article on John Paul Stevens by the New York Times. I definitely don’t agree with all his opinions, but it is hard to argue that his voice and experience with decades of serving on the Supreme Court are detrimental. I don’t know that Justices are constantly able to think broadly in terms of history, but I expect it would be easier if you had broad experience with it.

I would hope that we could avoid messy confirmation battles like the one that Clarence Thomas went through, but I would prefer having those battles over changing a system that has worked pretty darn well for so long. With the political battles that have been fought recently, it seems more important than ever to make sure that the Supreme Court Justices are as independent and removed from the political process as possible. Lastly, term limits would cut short the time that once in a generation minds could serve. What if Oliver Wendell Holmes Jr. was only allowed to serve 18 years? What about John Marshall? What about Louis Brandeis?

[Edit: I wanted to add that Clarence Thomas's recent autobiography and interview on 60 Minutes have caused Anita Hill to speak out. This seems like one of those stories for which we may never be able to fully know the truth. It also is exactly the worst kind of story in politics in that it has almost no significance on the national level but yet we still devote tons of time to trying to understand it.]

[Edit2: More commentary on cnn.com that argues Clarence Thomas has a right to be angry.]