On January 20, 2021, the Fulton Debating Society held the 128th annual Fulton Prize Debate on Zoom. This debate was a make-up for last year’s debate, which was cancelled, due to the outbreak of the COVID pandemic.
The topic for the debate was, “Resolved: The United States should adopt a constitutional amendment to require term limits for justices of the Supreme Court.”
Debating on the affirmative side was Benjamin Dewhurst, ’21 and Sophia Carter, ’22. The negative side was argued by Louis Gleason, IV, ’23 and Cross Conrad, ’23.
In the debate, the affirmative side advocated a plan to impose 18-year nonrenewable term limits for each new Supreme Court justice. Under the proposal, every President would nominate two justices during the first and third years of their administration. To prevent expanding the size of the Supreme, the current justices would rotate off the court based on seniority.
The affirmative claimed 18-year term-limits and regular appointments would promote five advantages: (1) reduce partisan fighting over the confirmation of new justices, (2) prevent mentally or physically infirm justices from serving on the bench, (3) solve for strategic retirement by justices, (4) decrease incentives for the appointment younger, less qualified justices, and (5) make the court more democratic and reflective of contemporary views.
The negative side argued that having new court appointments every two years, coinciding with the holding of mid-term and presidential elections, would increase partisan fighting. Ideologues on both sides would have the incentives to fight about judges during every major election.
As for making the Supreme Court more democratic and responsive to prevailing public views, the negative pointed out that there were benefits to retaining the Supreme Court as an ant-majoritarian body. They cited rulings by the Supreme Court in the areas of freedom of speech and racial equality where the Court issued rulings that promoted rights despite being unpopular at the time.
Finally, the negative presented two disadvantages to abandoning lifetime tenure. First, it argued that lifetime tenure would undermine judicial independence. Under term-limits, there always exists the risk of judges making political rulings during their final years on the bench when they are considering future employment opportunities.
Second, it argued that 18-year term limits would lead to doctrinal instability. Changing the composition of the Court that often would cause judicial whiplash. Rulings would be repeatedly overruled and then re-instated and then over-ruled again. The negative cited a study by Vanderbilt Law professor Suzanna Sherry which found that if the affirmative plan had existed in 1973, Roe v. Wade would have been overruled in 1987, reinstated in 2009 and then overruled again in 2017.
This year’s judges were six distinguished Fulton alumni from three decades, including Dr. Michael Janas, ’87 (Chair, Samford Communication Department), Dr. Charles Morris, III, ’91 (Chair, Syracuse Communication Department), Wenyu Ho Blanchard, ’95 (attorney, Alliant Energy), Brendan Benedict, ’12 (private practice attorney, Washington, DC), Dilip Paliath, ’93 (Magistrate in Baltimore County, Maryland), and Gabriel Stacy, ’12 (President & owner of Acture Solutions).
In a 5-1 decision, the judges voted for the negative and awarded the Fulton Medal (for top speaker) to Cross Conrad and the Gargan Medal (for second best speaker) to Sophia Carter. Sometime in April, the 129th Fulton Prize Debate will be held.