Haiti’s one time blood-soaked dictator, Papa Doc Duvalier was “elected” President for Life, as had been a number of his predecessors, as have quite a number of dictators world-wide. This title is, of course, a euphemism for Dictator for Life. In the U.S. no elected official in the executive and legislative branches can hold office for life. However, the federal judiciary is dominated by appointees who hold office until retirement or death. This anomalous lifetime tenure in office is intended to free the judges from having to seek re-election and so from subservience to any particular voting base, and supports an indifference to politics that we would expect of an honest judge.

But federal judges are appointed by the President, must be confirmed by the Senate, and are thus the same as all other high-level political appointees except that their terms of service do not end with a change of government. So if a justice of the Supreme Court is nominated because of her/his political orientation, upon the recommendation of an radical political organization (e.g., the Federalist Society), and is hastily confirmed only by the votes of a temporary majority in the Senate, the odds are, it seems to me, that the justice so appointed may continue as a creature of the political faction that brought about his/her appointment and confirmation throughout her/his lifetime term. And if connivance and misfortune create enough justices of this sort to constitute a majority on the Court, we have all that is needed for a judicial dictatorship for life.