The campaigns against term limits, should they succeed, would drastically change the process by which millions of Americans elect a variety of their leaders — and how much power those leaders can amass once in office.
The elected leaders, some of whom supported term limits when they were imposed, argue that the limits severely hamper government and leave the officials little time to figure out the mechanics of their office. That forces them to gravitate toward small-bore projects that can be done quickly, rather than anything visionary that would take years to achieve.
In what could be called the second-term itch, they are pushing to revise the laws so they can serve another term (New York City and Rowlett, Tex.) or to repeal them so they can seek re-election indefinitely (State College, Pa., and Daytona Beach Shores, Fla.).
“It has been an unmitigated disaster for the city,” said Phil Hardberger, the departing mayor of San Antonio, who supports a November referendum to lengthen term limits to four two-year terms from two.
“The learning curve of how city government works and how to get things done is steep, but when you keep putting people in, and throwing them out, there is very little accountability,” he added. “We do a lot of churning here, but we don’t produce a lot of butter.”
The term limits movement swept across the country in the early 1990s at a moment of intense frustration with American politics. In Congress, Republicans like Newt Gingrich made the limits a central theme of their Contract With America, and it soon trickled down to local governments.
Advocacy groups, like U.S. Term Limits, sprung up to push cities and states to pass the new laws. The backers of term limits argued that a broken government needed to be fixed with fresh faces, uncorrupted by money and politics; supporters like Ronald S. Lauder, the billionaire cosmetics heir, helped put the term-limit proposals on the ballot, scoring victories in New York City and 11 other municipalities in New York State.
Now, “there is definitely a backlash against it,” said John Clayton Thomas, a professor of public administration at Georgia State University who has written extensively about term limits.
Some officials pushing the changes say the turnover created by term limits robs an elected body of valuable institutional memory. In Tacoma, four of the city’s nine council members will be forced from office by January 2010 after completion of their second four-year terms. That worries Councilwoman Connie Ladenburg, who has spent years pushing for a $2 million pedestrian and bike trail, among other projects.
“That is when I thought, ‘This is crazy.’ If I go away, and it’s not completed, what will happen?” she said.
As a result, Ms. Ladenburg shepherded a November referendum to overturn term limits. “The public wonders why we don’t get things done. Well, you have to be there awhile to get things done.”
In Rowlett, Tex., a Dallas suburb of 55,000 people, Mayor John E. Harper says that limits of two three-year terms make it difficult for local officials to land coveted positions on national organizations such as the U.S. Conference of Mayors or the National League of Cities. Belonging to such groups mean that “you’re sitting at the table discussing the pros and cons of policy on energy, immigration, health insurance and everything else,” he said.
Voters in Rowlett will decide in a November referendum whether to extend the limits to three terms.
Term limits also tend to make local officials think constantly about re-election and their next career move, making fund-raising and politicking more of a priority, said Mayor A. C. Wharton of Shelby County, Tenn., which encompasses Memphis.
Moreover, Mr. Wharton continued, the measures leave too much power in the hands of civil servants.
“We call those folks the We Bees, as in, ‘We be here when he’s gone,’ ” said Mr. Wharton, whose term expires in 2010. “It turns the running of government, to a large degree, to individuals who’ve never been elected by anybody.”
It is not just long-serving legislators, fearful they will soon lose a job, who oppose term limits.
In State College, Pa., Peter Morris, who was elected to the seven-member Borough Council last year, said he owes his job to term limits because they forced popular incumbents out of office. Nevertheless, his experience in local government has turned him into an outspoken opponent of them. Mr. Morris said he and three other new members of the council lack experience on everything from how to craft an annual budget to the history behind a complex redevelopment project.
Officials in New York City, however, are contemplating the unusual method of changing term limits through the City Council, rather than through popular vote. That may be easier to push through, given that voters would be likely to resist such a change, having supported term limits in 1993 and 1996. But it is also far more controversial.
“I like Bloomberg, but he looks like a politician if he does it, as opposed to a guy who came in to reform New York City,” Howard Rich, chairman of U.S. Term Limits, said of New York City’s mayor, Michael R. Bloomberg. “To bypass the will of the people without their permission strikes me as profoundly selfish and undemocratic.”
There is precedent for what New York is considering. In 2001, the D.C. Council in Washington overturned a term limits law that had been approved by voters seven years earlier. Despite working around voters, council members experienced no serious repercussions, said Councilman Jack Evans, who led the effort. He pointed to his own re-election two years later. “Nobody ever raised it — and I was the guy who proposed it,” he said.
Mr. Evans said it helped to overturn term limits early in a two-year term. “Do it quickly and get it out of the way,” he said. “People have a short-term memory.”
That is not a luxury New York City Council members or Mr. Bloomberg have, however. They are considering changing term limits in the third year of a four-year term.
To the staunchest supporters of term limits, the misgivings being expressed are predictable, coming from endangered officials who care primarily about their own political futures, not the welfare of the public.
Mr. Rich noted that polls have consistently demonstrated that most people still support term limits. Currently, 37 governors, 15 state legislatures and 9 of the country’s 10 most populous cities face term limits, and recent ballot initiatives to alter them, including one in California in February, have failed.
One thing supporters and opponents mainly share is an uneasiness with incumbent politicians, like those in New York, trying to change term limits laws in a way that would directly benefit them.
San Antonio and Rowlett have stipulated that any changes apply only to future officeholders, or at least be postponed for a couple of years. Asked about New York’s effort, Mr. Harper, the mayor of Rowlett, said: “I would not be in favor of that. We ought not to do end runs around the ground rules.”
Aim: Do you think Mory's will survive according to the article "A Vestige of Yale’s Past Fights for Life" ? Why?
Journal Response #2: Do you know any restaurant or deli in the neighborhood that has been there for decades? Has the place changed dramatically in the past years? How?
Procedure:
After reading the article "A Vestige of Yale's Past Fights for Life" , you'll-
- New Voc. -Vestige: a trace, mark, or visible sign left by something (as an ancient city or a condition or practice) vanished or lost
- Describe Mory's.
- Identify the changes Mory's has made in recent years in order to survive.
- Compare and contrast the facts and determine whether Mory's will survive the future. Use the evidence from the article to support your opinion.
HW# 8
Complete the table-
| Descriptions of Mory's | Mory's Past | Mory's Present | Changes Mory's Has Made | Your Prediction of Mory's Future |
|
|
HW# 9 (Essay #3)Write an essay to express your prediction of Mory's future. Use evidence from the text to support your opinions.
Aim:
- Why has the U.S. Court lost its influence in the world?
- Should American law conform to the laws of the rest of the world? Why or why not?
Do Now: Journal #3
What is the foundation of the U.S. laws? Who established it?
Procedure:
- Read the article
U.S. Court, a Longtime Beacon, Is Now Guiding
Fewer Nations and mark the lines that
describe
- U.S. Court's past influence in the world
- Its weakened position
- Do you agree that U.S. Court
should conform to the laws of the rest of
world? Read the following letters on the
issue and select statements that support
your position.
HW #10 After reading the article, select three example of the U.S. court's past influence and three examples of its weakened position in the world.
Do Now: Read the following letters and select statements that will support your position.
Letters
U.S. and Foreign Law:
Oceans Apart
To the Editor:
Re “U.S. Court, a Longtime Beacon, Is Now Guiding Fewer Nations” (“American Exception” series, front page, Sept. 18):
Perhaps American law should not conform to the laws of the rest of the world, as Justice Antonin Scalia argued in Roper v. Simmons, but there is nothing wrong with taking a peek at the outside world and taking stock of the customs of societies similar to our own.
Stubbornly refusing to reconsider one’s values in the face of changing perceptions might appear to be a position of integrity, a stand against what Justice Scalia might perceive as dangerous “relativism.” But taking such a stand could equally be a bull-headed position that prevents real social progress.
Few now would contend that segregation or the disenfranchisement of blacks and women are morally acceptable conditions in an enlightened society.
But in the context of those times, surely a justice would not have been wrong to take note that Britain had banned the practice and that perhaps it was time for the United States to do so as well.
Being mired in a situation can blind one to the rightness or wrongness of it. In those cases it seems instructional to look at the decisions of societies that do things differently.
Does this mean that we are trying to conform to the laws of other countries, or does it merely mean that we are wise enough to peer into the hearts of our fellow men for perspective?
Eric Tadsen
Madison, Wis., Sept.
To the Editor:
Those of us concerned about citation of foreign law — your article quotes me as one of them — believe in something called American exceptionalism, which holds that the United States is a beacon of liberty, democracy and equality of opportunity to the rest of the world. We think that it is a good thing that constitutional liberties like freedom of speech and of the press are protected more vigorously in the United States than in any foreign country.
We believe that the rights of man, as President Kennedy said in his Inaugural Address, “come not from the generosity of the state, but from the hand of God.”
The country that saved Europe from tyranny and destruction in the 20th century and that is now saving it again from the threat of terrorist extremism and Russian tyranny needs no lessons from the socialist constitutional courts of Europe on what liberty consists of.
Steven G.
Calabresi
Providence, R.I.,
Sept.
The writer is a professor of law at Northwestern University and a co-founder of the Federalist Society.
To the Editor:
Why should we be surprised at the loss of international respect the Supreme Court has suffered in recent years? The court crippled its reputation on Dec. 12, 2000, when a majority made George W. Bush the winner of the disputed presidential election in a decision so nakedly partisan and so bereft of legitimate legal grounds that even some conservative legal scholars complained.
And as long as the court continues to be seen (fairly or not) as a puppet of the Republicans, it cannot command the respect the high court had when it was perceived as being impartial and, if not necessarily nonpolitical, at least nonpartisan.
Eric B. Lipps
Staten Island, Sept.
18, 2008
•
To the Editor:
An important reason for America’s loss of influence in foreign courts is that our courts have not kept pace with trends in global justice. Most federal judges have little background in or exposure to the new international legal order. Few judges have studied international law as law students.
All too often lawyers who appear before them are likewise ill prepared to present relevant international law arguments or precedents. Yet, increasingly, our judges are having to decide cases that involve these laws.
If the United States is to regain its leadership on the world stage, we must make a concerted effort to bring our courts into the 21st century’s interconnected global legal environment.
Alice H. Henkin
New York, Sept.
18, 2008
•
To the Editor:
The subtext of your article seems to be that most Americans are “suspicious” of foreign law out of xenophobia, ignorance and general backwardness. This is incorrect. Our Supreme Court cannot legitimately adjudicate based upon “inspiration” from other countries, or borrow from them to create a “good impression,” as suggested by people quoted in the article.
In America, laws must derive from the consent of the governed through the representative branches. To do otherwise destroys self-government, which is what our country was all about in the first place.
Wendy Long
New York, Sept.
18, 2008
The writer is counsel to the Judicial Confirmation Network.
Your article rightly notes the growing antipathy in the United States to judicial opinions that cite foreign law. What is worse is that some of the more extreme views on the subject are leaching into the political mainstream.
During the confirmation hearings for Chief Justice John G. Roberts, for example, one member of the Senate Judiciary Committee implied that American judges who cite foreign law should be impeached.
Perhaps it is time for adherents of the no-foreign-law school to explain just how their enlightened jurisprudence would work in practice:
Is it similarly illegitimate for a state court to cite precedent from another state?
Must judges also avert their eyes from foreign law when deciding cases involving treaties, international business transactions or international taxation?
Does “foreign” law include the law of England, from which our own legal system evolved? Shall we impeach judges who cite Magna Carta?
Just wondering.
Fred Kameny
Chapel Hill, N.C.,
Sept.
Procedure:
After selecting 3 opinions from the above letter, combine the statements and the evidence you have identified in the article and write a letter to the supreme court to express your position on this issue of whether the U.S. Court should AVERT OR conform to the world court.
HW#11
Write a letter to the supreme court stating your position on whether the US. Court should avert or confirm to the world court.
Letter is a form but it's an essay.
Introduction:
State your opinion: Should the U.S. Court conform to the world law or avert it?
Body
Reason 1( if your opinion is we the U.S. Court should not, then cite the past influences of the U.S. law in the world; if your opinion is yes, then cite the U.S. Court's weakened position in the world).
Reason 2: you can quote directly from the article but you need to explain in your own words what the quotation means to you.
Reason 3