Lifetime Tenure Quotes

Federal judges may long outlast the Presidents who appoint them.

The English Parliament in 1641 created judges for life. Before that, judges could be and were sacked.

What the framers of the Constitution tried to achieve when they wrote that Constitution back in the 1700s was an independent federal judiciary. They wanted federal judges to be appointed by the president, with the advice and consent of the Senate, and to serve for good behavior.

Members of the Supreme Court have lifetime tenures because they're not supposed to do politics.

It's a good process. It takes a while, and it should. Life tenure is one of our most important safeguards.... I want to make impeachment as our founders had in mind—very difficult.

Let the Executive [the President] also be for life.

That judges of important causes should hold office for life is not a good thing, for the mind grows old as well as the body.

The federal judiciary is unlike the other branches of government. And once confirmed, a federal judge serves for life. And there's no court above the Supreme Court.

[Federal judges] consider themselves secure for life; they skulk from responsibility to public opinion.... A judiciary independent of a king or executive alone is a good thing; but independence of the will of the nation is a solecism, at least in a republican government.

If some period be not fixed, either by the Constitution or by practice, to the services of the First Magistrate, his office, though nominally elective, will, in fact, be for life, and that will soon degenerate into an inheritance.