Following controversial Supreme Court rulings on Obamacare and same-sex marriage last month, most Americans now believe term limits should be imposed on the nine Supreme Court justices, according to a Reuters/Ipsos poll.
In a bipartisan show of support, 66 percent said they favored implementing a 10-year term limit, while 17 percent supported the existing life tenure.
As it currently stands, justices serve life terms, only ending upon death or impeachment by Congress. It would take a constitutional amendment to initiate term limits, but doing so would be difficult due to the various political hurdles.
Five of the current justices were appointed by Republican presidents and four by Democrats. Five have served for more than 20 years, one for nearly 10 years, and the other three were appointed within the past decade.
While the two rulings in June were highly lauded by liberals, 66 percent of Democrats said they would still support 10-year term limits. Seventy-four percent of Republicans said the same, as did 68 percent of independents.
"It's not surprising that Supreme Court terms limits are supported across party lines since, as a nation, we've always felt it's wrong for a handful of individuals to hold on to immense power for decades on end, as is the current trend at the high court," said Gabe Roth, executive director of Fix the Court, a nonpartisan advocacy group pushing for justices to voluntarily step down after 18 years, reports Reuters.
Per the Constitution, justices are appointed by the president and then confirmed by the U.S. Senate.
Only 32 percent of respondents said they support that current mechanism, with 48 percent saying justices should be elected.
When it comes to the court's role as the final arbiter of U.S. law, only 29 percent supported changing the rules to allow Congress or the president to overrule the court's decision.
The court's job is to weigh in on which rights Americans do or do not have according to the Constitution, and they are able strike down laws passed by Congress if they are determined to violate the Constitution.
The court has tackled a number of highly divisive issues, including property rights, slavery, racial segregation and abortion.
The poll was conducted after the court in June ruled 5-4 in favor of gay marriage and 6-3 in favor of federal subsidies under the Affordable Care Act.
Most Republicans were outraged by the decision, with perhaps the most vocal being 2016 presidential contender Sen. Ted Cruz of Texas, who said the court "crossed from the realm of activism into the arena of oligarchy," and proposed a constitutional amendment calling for periodic judicial retention elections, as HNGN reported.
"In order to provide the people themselves with a constitutional remedy to the problem of judicial activism and the means for throwing off judicial tyrants, I am proposing an amendment to the United States Constitution that would subject the justices of the Supreme Court to periodic judicial-retention elections," Cruz wrote. "Every justice, beginning with the second national election after his or her appointment, will answer to the American people and the states in a retention election every eight years. Those justices deemed unfit for retention by both a majority of the American people as a whole and by majorities of the electorates in at least half of the 50 states will be removed from office and disqualified from future service on the Court."
