“FREEDOM, ORDER, EQUALITY” — the three values the American government prides itself on, with the Supreme Court playing a role as arguably one of, if not the main, examples of these qualities. The Supreme Court, according to its website, is the “highest tribunal in the Nation” and the “final arbiter of the law,” giving the nine justices the ultimate “checking” ability in terms of legislation and constitutionality.

However, criticisms regarding the Court imply its structure may result in corruption, underrepresentation and abuse of power. While I agree in the sense the Court needs reform, I disagree with many of the popular solutions brought up by critics, such as instating 18-year term limits or increasing the number of justices. 

In the matter of term limits and appointment, the framers of the Constitution argued for lifelong tenure because it eliminates the election and reduces the need for justices to make popular decisions over one that is objective and rule-based. However, at this point, I’m not sure if the original rationale still applies, with all of the controversial decisions made in politics anyway despite the importance of public opinion in elections. The irregularity of appointing justices (the only processes to remove a justice besides impeachment are retirement or death) can also lead to a lack of structure and reliability, as well as corruption, in the Court. 

A regularly cited argument is that Court justices should have an 18-year term limit, which could lead to lowered stakes for nomination, a more stable system, and equality in presidential influence. However, Congress already introduced this solution in a 2021 bill that failed to pass, which, in my mind, makes sense. The current average term served is 16 years, and creating a new system of appointment would create implications regarding the outcomes for the current justices, the Court’s seniority-based processes and could also politicize the Court through the need to more frequently navigate appointments. 

Increasing the number of justices is a similar story; although in theory, it would lead to greater representation in Court, it also leads to a plethora of questions regarding appointment and the risk of court packing. The likelihood of appointing a Supreme Court justice belonging to an underrepresented group is also quite low comparatively–who’s to say we won’t end up with a court of 15 that runs the exact same way?

So while the aforementioned solutions should not be instated—unless policymakers propose a way to do it that covers all of their bases—there should be more methods of accountability taken as the current checks and balances system doesn’t give the other branches much power to hold the Court accountable besides through impeachment, which is a difficult and extremely rare process.

While the lack of accountability enforced on the Court makes sense on paper, as a major aspect of the Court’s purpose is to rule on the constitutionality of others, the corruption that comes with it feels gross to me. With Chief Justice John Roberts molding the outcomes of several election cases following the Jan 6 attack to favor President Donald Trump and the justices’ ability to accept undisclosed monetary “gifts,” the absence of a code of conduct in terms of external biases and potential corruption that is not only verbal but also enforceable is unacceptable.

I’m not talking about an ethical code of conduct in terms of decision-making, which would be difficult to establish because of the changing times and would detract from objectivity, but regulations or committees adjacent to the House Office of Congressional Ethics safeguard against misconduct.

The public also often criticizes the Court’s political nature, with 62% of respondents in a 2021 poll believing that politics, rather than the Constitution and precedent, drives the Court’s decisions. I understand this viewpoint in the aftermath of certain controversial cases, such as Dobbs v. Jackson overturning Roe v. Wade, raising the question of how much following precedent even matters when deciding a case. 

Though I don’t want to comment on the above case, I don’t think straying from precedent in general is necessarily a bad thing; the Constitution was written in 1787, and the last Amendment was added in 1992. Guys, it’s 2025, and the world is changing so rapidly I can’t even imagine what Main Street will look like in five years, let alone what the state of politics will entail. But I think these trends might show there isn’t as much consideration given to precedent as maybe there should be.

What the Court needs isn’t quantitative change—increasing the number of justices or decreasing the number of terms—but rather a more thorough evaluation of their priorities in terms of our country’s core values and an actually enforceable method of holding the Court accountable. 

The views in this column do not necessarily reflect the views of the HiLite staff. Reach Ivy Zhen at [email protected].