The Federal Judiciary Has a Gerontocracy Problem

There are currently 870 active federal judges, and 104 of them are eligible to retire, but refuse to do so.

Frida Ghitis: Term limits are popular with the public, but there are constitutional problems with term limits.

She says the Constitution says that federal judges serve for life, but it doesn’t say where they must serve.

Ghitis says senior status limits the lifetime power of federal judges without violating any constitutional principle.

The point of term limits is to take the balance of partisan power in the federal judiciary out of the hands of folks who can’t think of anything better to do in their golden years .

The grim reaper is slowly loosening the iron grip of the baby boomer gerontocracy. The time to reform our system is now.

Our dedicated writers have sat down with Kamala Harris and Bernie Sanders for interviews, unpacked the shallow right-wing populist appeals of J.D. Vance , and debated the pathway for a Democratic victory in November .

Now more than ever, we need clear-eyed and deeply reported independent journalism to make sense of the headlines and sort fact from fiction.