Russ Feingold Quotes
People whose terms go for five years or longer, like FCC commissioners. That's a higher standard. Then district judges, who are appointed for a lifetime but can be overruled. Then Court of Appeals judges. They're not the highest level, but they're almost the final word. And then, of course, the Supreme Court.
United States, Congress, Senate. Committee on the Judiciary. Confirmation Hearing on the Nomination of John G. Roberts, Jr. to be Chief Justice of the United States. U.S. Government Printing Office, 13 Sept. 2005, p. 25.
The notion of lifetime appointment for federal judges had been debated before and during the constitutional convention. The founders wrote it into the constitution to give the judges more security so that they could not be pressured by politicians or wealthy individuals. Also, without this concept many countries have judges who are just rubber stamps for the legislature or the leader of the country.
White was not confirmed.
The reference was to the Presidential power to appoint Supreme Court Justices who will serve beyond his term.
The country was growing and the number of Federal Judges were totally inadequate. The main reason is that the Senators were appointed by state legislatures and states did not want any Federal Judges perhaps weakening the power of the state governments and the judiciary.
England appears to have been the origin of judicial, lifetime tenure.
G. Harold Carswell was nominated to a vacancy on the Supreme Court by President Nixon. The nominee did not have a reputation as a distinguished jurist. Senator Hruska defended the nomination:
In America, the best attorneys have stayed in private practice where they could make much more money than government service or become professors and scholars of law. In either case, most have a track record that would make Senate confirmation difficult even if they wanted to be Federal Judges. A few like Abraham Lincoln went into politics. The Supreme Court is somewhat of an exception because of the power it wields, but even then many great attorneys have not been so inclined. Federal judges have usually been above average as attorneys, but not among the greatest.
This was the most eloquent acknowledgement of the import and difficult job of the Federal Disctrict Judges--the backbone of the Federal Judiciary who are oftetn over looked in favor of the appellate judges and Supreme Court judges who deal with cases as a group and always have the privelege of reviewing and second guessing the work of the district judges who first had to decide the issue on way or the other.
Russell Dana Feingold is an American lawyer and politician who served as a United States Senator from Wisconsin from 1993 to 2011. A member of the Democratic Party, he was its nominee in the 2016 election for the same U.S. Senate seat he had previously occupied. From 1983 to 1993, he was a Wisconsin State Senator representing the 27th District.
