Donald J. Trump’s nomination of Judge Neil Gorsuch to the U.S. Supreme Court has spurred a discussion that needs to end.

It involves whether there should be term limits for Supreme Court justices.

The nation’s founders didn’t create a perfect government after the American Revolution. They got a few things wrong: Women didn’t have the right to vote; they allowed human beings to own other human beings.

They got a lot of things quite right. One of them was to establish an independent federal judiciary where judges are given lifetime jobs upon being confirmed by the U.S. Senate.

Article III, Section 1 of the U.S. Constitution provides that “Judges, both of the supreme and inferior Courts, shall hold their Offices during good Behaviour …”

There you go. If judges behave themselves and do the job to which they take an oath, they can stay for as long as they want. That holds true for Supreme Court justices especially.

Some progressives are alarmed that Trump has appointed a conservative judge to replace an iconic conservative justice, Antonin Scalia, who’s been dead for nearly a year. Let’s limit the terms of justices, they contend.

Hey, I’m on their side most of the time. Not here. The founders had this idea that judges should be free of political pressure. Thus, the lifetime appointment gives them a measure of independence to interpret the U.S. Constitution according to what they believe it tells them.

http://blog.independent.org/2017/02/01/term-limits-for-supreme-court-justices/

History has provided ample demonstration of that independence from judges who didn’t rule quite the way their presidential benefactors wanted. They find their own voice and serve as a check on the legislative and executive branches of government.

I see virtually nothing wrong with judges serving for the rest of their lives on the federal bench — even those with whom I disagree; and believe me, I am sure I will dislike most, if not all, of Neil Gorsuch’s rulings from the high court bench when or if he is confirmed by the Senate.

Then again, given the freedom to interpret the Constitution as broadly or narrowly as he chooses, Gorsuch could surprise us all and join the ranks of men such as Earl Warren, William Brennan, Byron White, John Paul Stevens and Harry Blackmun — all of whom broke with how legal experts expected them to rule.