Sens. Joe Manchin and Peter Welch have introduced a constitutional amendment that would restrict future Supreme Court justices to, at most, 18-year terms.

Though Fix the Court was consulted on the resolution, we are not endorsing it since we believe that, via statute, term limits could be implemented and future justices could be rotated off the Court after 18 years.

That said, we’re always happy to see members of Congress — especially ones whose ideologies are far from identical — consider and work toward much-needed court reform.

Here’s how the amendment would work (see also the sub-head “Justices-In-Waiting” in our Aug. 2024 post):

Say it’s ratified in 2025, and Justice Thomas decides to leave the Court in 2027. The justice who would be appointed to replace Thomas would only serve 16 years, until 2043, since the 18-year clock on Thomas’ replacement (or whoever the first justice to retire post-ratification is) had begun in 2025.

While that sounds fine in theory, the challenge arises if, say, Justice Kagan or Justice Gorsuch decides to serve until they’re 90, which isn’t out of the question. In that scenario, the justice replacing the nonagenarian would end up serving only a few years, which is not great from a judicial independence perspective.

We believe the trimmed terms envisioned in the amendment can be implemented via statute, though again, our preferred method of ending life tenure is to give all future justices full 18-year terms.

Finally, we do appreciate the section of the resolution where, on a rotating basis, the senior-most associate justice would become Chief Justice. The idea that a justice on his or her first day on the job could be the Chief always sat a little strange with us.