The United States has a long tradition of politicians pausing on their way out the door to point out a serious problem the country is facing. From George Washington lamenting the growing power of political parties to Dwight Eisenhower warning about the “military-industrial complex” to, well, pretty much everything Mitt Romney’s been going on about since he decided to retire.
The flip side of this truth-telling is that it can feel a little disappointing to the audience. You’re telling us this now? Why didn’t you do something about it when you were in power?
That’s pretty much the reaction to the recent announcement from outgoing West Virginia Sen. Joe Manchin, the most consistently exasperating member of the U.S. Senate in living memory. Over the weekend, the Democratic-turned-independent senator declared his support for a constitutional amendment establishing term limits for Supreme Court justices.
“The current lifetime Supreme Court appointment structure is broken and fuels polarizing confirmation battles and political posturing that has eroded public confidence in the highest court in our land,” he wrote on X.
More than half of Americans have an unfavorable view of the court, a historic low that has come about after years of decline.
That’s not news to anyone who’s paid attention to the Supreme Court in recent years. More than half of Americans have an unfavorable view of the court, a historic low that has come about after years of decline followed by a massive drop in the aftermath of the decision to overturn Roe v. Wade in 2022. Supreme Court confirmations have become mostly party-line votes. The current court is the most conservative in nearly a century and will likely remain that way for decades. The 6-3 supermajority also seems to have emboldened the justices’ worst impulses, from sketchy dealings with conservative donors to the lack of an enforceable ethics code.
Even more striking is how much the public wants change. In a USA Today-Ipsos poll in August, 76% of Americans supported a binding code of ethics for the Supreme Court, 70% favored a constitutional amendment essentially overturning the recent expansive presidential immunity decision, and 63% backed an 18-year term limit for justices.
It shouldn’t be surprising, then, that a U.S. senator might put their finger to the wind and decide to call for change. But Manchin’s announcement is still noteworthy, given that he has long played a cautious and ultimately self-defeating game on the Supreme Court.
When Barack Obama nominated the milquetoast Merrick Garland to the high court, Manchin raised concerns and might have even voted against him had Republicans not held the seat open. He voted for Trump’s first two nominees, Justices Neil Gorsuch and Brett Kavanaugh, but objected to the rushed confirmation of Amy Coney Barrett just weeks before the election. He voted for Joe Biden-appointed Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson, then said he might not back a second Biden nominee if one came up.
The underlying principles behind these moves were a sense that the Supreme Court should be above politics, that senators should hold their own party accountable if their nominees are too extreme and that the norms and traditions of the Senate should be upheld. Those are all defensible ideas, but it’s long been clear that they don’t work when only one party upholds them.
While he was hoping to avoid having his re-election torpedoed by a bruising Supreme Court fight, the GOP was playing offense.
As an embattled Democrat from a deep red state, Manchin’s political logic was also defensive. But while he was hoping to avoid having his re-election torpedoed by a bruising Supreme Court fight, the GOP was playing offense.
Republican senators refused to let Garland come up for a vote based on a made-up rule about confirmations in election years before switching positions to confirm Barrett. They lowered the threshold for Supreme Court justices to a simple majority, paving the way for more partisan nomination votes. They uniformly backed Kavanaugh despite serious concerns raised during his confirmation hearings; and they’ve looked the other way at various scandals among other sitting justices since then. While Republicans lost a few Senate seats in 2022 after the court overturned Roe v. Wade, they regained the majority in 2024, and these hardball tactics over the years have given conservatives an enduring lock on the court at seemingly little cost. It’s nice to see that even Manchin now realizes the magnitude of his miscalculation, even if it comes too late to do anything about it. A constitutional amendment, as he proposes, would require a two-thirds vote of both the House and the Senate followed by ratification by 38 states. Regardless of the idea’s merits or poll numbers, there’s no universe where Republican elected officials will go along with the idea. Unfortunately, the real solution will more likely be political. Before this is all over, Democrats will likely end up adopting more aggressive tactics such as refusing to hold a vote on a Republican nominee, embarrassing justices with probing investigations into ethics problems, passing gift bans or other ethics codes through Congress or even threatening impeachment over particularly egregious scandals. If they decide a more structural response is needed, they would most likely end up expanding the court, which doesn’t require amending the Constitution. This won’t solve the problem either, as it would lead to Republican retaliation. But, then again, that’s the reason why it’s only retiring politicians who speak up on these issues. Washington and Eisenhower didn’t have any realistic solutions to the issues they described, and neither does Manchin. He’s done us all a favor by pointing out the problem, but the solution remains for the rest of us to find.
Ryan Teague Beckwith is a newsletter editor for MS NOW. 
