Supreme Court Reform — Accountability, Ethics, and Term Limits
The Supreme Court is the only branch of government with no term limits, no binding ethics code, and no meaningful accountability. 18-year terms. Binding ethics. Expand to 18 seats. Supermajority to overturn precedent.
The two-minute version.
Supreme Court justices serve life terms with no binding ethics code, no term limits, and no meaningful accountability mechanism. The Court is the only branch of the federal government exempt from the ethics rules that apply to all other federal judges. Six of the nine current justices were appointed by presidents who lost the popular vote. The Court decides cases affecting 330 million people by 5-4 votes with no supermajority requirement for overturning precedent.
18-year term limits with staggered appointments. Binding ethics code with independent enforcement. Expand the Court to 18 seats phased in over multiple terms. Raise salary to $350K. Supermajority requirement (12 of 18) to overturn established precedent.
Every appointment becomes predictable — one per year, no more vacancy crises. Ethics enforcement ends the era of undisclosed gifts and conflicts of interest. A supermajority requirement protects settled law from narrow 5-4 reversals. The Court becomes more representative, more accountable, and more legitimate.
Article III of the Constitution provides that federal judges 'shall hold their Offices during good Behaviour' — interpreted as life tenure. The framers intended judicial independence, but they could not have anticipated justices serving 30-40 year terms in an era when the average lifespan was 38. The result is a system where the timing of deaths and retirements — pure chance — determines the ideological direction of American law for decades. Strategic retirement (timing departure to align with a favorable president) has become the norm, turning the Court into a political chess game.
The Supreme Court has no binding ethics code. Every other federal judge is governed by the Code of Conduct for United States Judges, administered by the Judicial Conference. The Supreme Court exempted itself. In 2023, following reporting by ProPublica revealing that Justice Clarence Thomas accepted undisclosed gifts worth millions of dollars from billionaire Harlan Crow — including luxury travel, private jet flights, a yacht trip, tuition payments for a relative, and the purchase of Thomas's mother's home — the Court adopted a voluntary 'Statement of Ethics Principles.' It has no enforcement mechanism, no independent investigation authority, and no consequences for violations.
The number of Supreme Court justices is not set by the Constitution. Congress has changed the size of the Court seven times: 6 (1789), 5 (1801), 7 (1807), 9 (1837), 10 (1863), 7 (1866), and 9 (1869). The current number — nine — has held since 1869, but there is nothing constitutionally sacred about it. Meanwhile, the Court's workload has changed dramatically: the federal system has grown from 30 judges in 1789 to over 870 today, the population from 4 million to 330 million, and cert petitions from a few hundred per year to approximately 7,000-8,000 annually.
Six of the nine current justices were appointed by presidents who lost the popular vote (three by George W. Bush, three by Donald Trump). This means the branch of government with the most power and the least accountability is the one with the weakest democratic legitimacy. A bare majority of five justices — potentially all appointed by popular-vote-losing presidents — can overturn decades of settled precedent, as happened with Dobbs v. Jackson (2022), which overruled 49 years of Roe v. Wade. No supermajority requirement exists for such momentous reversals.
How the US compares.
What Americans face vs. what peer nations achieve.
| Measure | US | Peer Nation |
|---|---|---|
| Ethics code | None (binding) | Every other federal court(All other federal judges bound by the Code of Conduct for U.S. Judges) |
| Term limits | Life tenure | Major democracies(Germany: 12 years. UK: mandatory retirement at 70. Canada: mandatory retirement at 75.) |
| Court size vs. population | 9 for 330M | Germany(16 justices for 84M — nearly 2x the ratio of justices-to-population) |
| Justices appointed by popular-vote losers | 6 of 9 | 67%(Supermajority of the Court lacks direct democratic mandate) |
"Every other major democracy has figured out that a supreme court needs term limits, an ethics code, and accountability mechanisms. The idea that nine people should serve for life with no rules, no oversight, and no consequences is not judicial independence — it is judicial monarchy. We can do better."
— The Common Good Party — Supreme Court Reform Policy
What the CGP plan actually does
Term limits transform the appointment process. Instead of the current system — where a single vacancy can become a national crisis (Merrick Garland, 2016; Ruth Bader Ginsburg, 2020) — appointments become routine. One seat opens every year. Every president gets the same number of appointments. No more incentive to appoint the youngest possible candidate to maximize tenure. No more strategic retirements timed to the 'right' president. No more death-watch politics. The Court's composition naturally evolves with the electorate over an 18-year cycle.
A binding ethics code restores public trust. When ProPublica revealed that Justice Thomas accepted undisclosed luxury trips, private jet flights, and a real estate transaction from a billionaire with interests before the Court — and nothing happened — public confidence in the Court dropped to historic lows. Gallup reported approval of the Supreme Court at 40% in 2023, down from 62% in 2000. Independent enforcement means justices face real consequences for real violations, just like every other federal judge in America.
Expanding to 18 seats is not 'court packing' — it is court modernization. The Court was last sized at 9 in 1869, when the U.S. population was 38 million and the federal judiciary had a fraction of its current caseload. Nine justices for 330 million people means each justice effectively represents 37 million Americans — more than the population of Canada's Supreme Court jurisdiction per justice. An 18-member court can hear more cases (currently the Court accepts only 70-80 of ~7,500 cert petitions), form smaller panels for less consequential cases, and reduce the outsized influence of any single justice's ideology.
The supermajority requirement for overturning precedent protects everyone. Conservatives who value stability should welcome a rule that prevents a future liberal court from overturning Heller (gun rights) by a 5-4 vote. Progressives who value rights should welcome a rule that would have prevented Dobbs from overturning Roe by a single vote. The principle is neutral: settled law that millions of people have relied upon should not be reversed by the narrowest possible margin. Twelve of eighteen justices — a genuine supermajority — provides the stability that stare decisis was always supposed to deliver.
What changes under the CGP plan
"Life tenure with zero accountability is not judicial independence. It is judicial monarchy. Every other major democracy has term limits, ethics codes, and accountability for their highest court. The American experiment does not require that we be the last democracy on Earth to figure this out."
— CGP Supreme Court Reform Policy — §Executive Summary
See where every side actually stands.
Current federal law, the Democratic Party's 2024 platform, the Republican Party's 2024 platform, and our plan — side by side, sourced to the record.
Open the side-by-side comparisonThe homework other parties skip. We did it.
Sourced, cited, costed, and written to a standard that could walk into a legislative office tomorrow. 1,025 words across 5 pillars.
- Fix the Court — Supreme Court ethics and reform tracker
- ProPublica — Clarence Thomas undisclosed gifts investigation
- Gallup — Supreme Court approval ratings
- Congressional Research Service — Supreme Court appointment process
- Brennan Center for Justice — Supreme Court reform proposals
- American Bar Association — Judicial ethics standards