Readers Write: Supreme Court term limits, Project 2025

Opinion editor’s note: Star Tribune Opinion publishes letters from readers online and in print each day. To contribute, click here.

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Critics of President Joe Biden’s proposal to adopt term limits for U.S. Supreme Court justices argue that this would somehow diminish judicial independence (”Calls for court term limits attack foundations of our federal republic,” Opinion Exchange, Aug. 5). Just how that would occur is not specified, and for good reason. We have considerable experience with judicial term limits in the United States, and zero evidence that it has any impact on judicial independence. Over 30 states have term limits for their appellate courts, in the form of a mandatory retirement age. The majority of these states, including Minnesota, set the age at 70; a few go to 72, 73 or 75. Minnesota’s mandatory retirement age has been in place since at least 1973 and dozens of Minnesota Supreme Court justices, including myself, have retired at or before reaching age 70. Current U.S. Supreme Court Justices Clarence Thomas and Samuel Alito, at ages 76 and 74, could not serve as judges in Minnesota, and Chief Justice John Roberts, 69, would only be able to serve the remainder of his 69th year.

The mandatory retirement age provides an objective basis for the transition to a new, younger justice and provides no threat to the independence of any sitting or retiring justice.

Sam Hanson, Minneapolis

The writer is a former justice of the Minnesota Supreme Court.

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I found Brian Melendez’s counterpoint on term limits for the Supreme Court to be well-reasoned (”Why Supreme Court reform is needed — and isn’t an assault on the republic,” Opinion Exchange, Aug. 7). While I have resisted term limits for federal judges on the grounds of political independence, recent partisan decisions by the current court have shown that that independence is built on a foundation of personal integrity. That foundation may be built on sand.

I have a suggestion to improve the process further. I suggest an amendment to the Constitution requiring the Senate to begin hearings and deliberations on an appointment no more than 30 days after the president submits a candidate and that the Senate be required to vote on the nomination no more than 30 days after the beginning of the hearings and deliberations. The numbers may vary, but I believe such a result should take less than 90 days from the date the president nominates someone. This will limit partisan slow-walking of nominations and compel the Senate to do its job.

Events over the past decade have shown that Congress, destined to be inefficient from the beginning, has been further hampered by a lack of controls and malingering by the “workers.” Most of the most important work does not have deadlines or consequences for poor performance. It is time to address this gap before another Senate majority leader puts party before country.

Daniel Beckfield, New Brighton

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James Dickey’s commentary “Calls for court term limits attack foundations of our federal republic” prompted me to express something that has been on my mind for some time now. Our justice system is supposed to be blind, with balanced scales and equal justice for all, as the saying goes. But how can we have impartial judges when they can be labeled as “conservative” or “liberal” based on the history of their decisions? Or, worse, when they openly state that their religious beliefs guide their decisions?

As long as our judges and justices are political appointees, carrying the prejudices and views of the politicians who appoint them, I believe term limits and strictly enforceable ethics are essential.

S.J. Hanson, Minnetonka

Among other things, AK Kamara’s opinion piece Aug. 6 reveals a lack of knowledge about how positions are filled in the federal government (”Project 2025: The Democratic fever dream bogeyman”). He suggests that recruiting applicants for 3,300 jobs in the first Obama administration constituted an attempt to “radically reshape” the hiring process for executive branch positions. In fact, about 4,000 such positions are traditionally directly connected to an administration’s efforts to advance its agenda. This is a tiny proportion of all federal jobs. He fails to inform readers about how many such jobs were filled by other administrations, Republican or Democratic. By contrast, Project 2025 proposes to reclassify tens of thousands of civil service jobs with political appointees. That would truly constitute the kind of radical reshaping and politicization of the executive branch that Kamara seems to decry.

Cyndy Crist, St. Paul

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The Project 2025 commentary on government hiring practices from Aug. 6 brings up so many new, unsettling issues. Would these thousands of additional new appointees have to go through the congressional approval process that most political appointees do now? Would employees with the expertise and experience currently doing the job be fired? I’m a 40-year veteran of civil service, and we were instructed via continuing education to conduct ourselves without political bias when hiring, purchasing or any other duties. If Obama hired 3,300 government employees back in 2008, they had to have been hired according to the civil service policies at the time, and no one could have been replaced by a more politically desirable candidate. The problem for Donald Trump with government employees is that they follow rules and regulations that he doesn’t value — but have been established over time and function in a system that works.

The reason that the transfer of power has occurred so seamlessly over the past 150 years is because of this rational adherence to civil service structure. The stability of our government services and functions doesn’t currently depend on waiting for the vetting, hiring and training of thousands of employees in the switch from one party to another. Project 2025 seeks to revamp a merit-based apolitical system, in place since the 1880s, by replacing it with a political cronyism structure. Gee, what could go wrong? If government employees are hired for who they know and have allegiance to, instead of their expertise on the job, many services that we don’t even realize we count on will grind to a halt every four years.

This bureaucracy is not a perfectly functioning system; however, it is the envy of most all countries on the planet for its comparatively low level of corruption. We will find out pretty shortly how bad of an idea replacing civil service hiring procedures with Schedule F would be. If it isn’t broken (even for Trump), then don’t fix it!

Connie Clabots, Brooklyn Center

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It was interesting to read Kamara’s commentary telling us that Project 2025 is a “nothing to see here” plan that should not worry us one bit. (Does he not realize we are currently suffering from the Heritage Foundation’s agenda during the first Trump administration?) But what I found the most telling in Kamara’s article was this sentence: “At the conclusion of the 2020 election, which resulted in Joe Biden being sworn into office as the 46th president … .” Do you see it? Do you notice how this sentence is so carefully crafted to say Biden is president without admitting he won the election? Kamara goes on to call any concerns about Project 2025 to be based on lies and tries to quell fears about an upcoming dystopian America.

If Kamara cannot simply state that Biden won a fair election, I think it behooves us to closely examine (and possibly fear) his take on the idea that when it comes to Project 2025, that there is nothing to worry about.

Earl Weinmann, Northfield