John Roberts, later chief justice of the Supreme Court, recognized this when he championed judicial term limits in 1983, when he was working in the Office of White House Counsel under President Ronald Reagan: The framers adopted life tenure at a time when people simply did not live as long as they do now. A judge insulated from the normal currents of life for twenty-five or thirty years was a rarity then, but it is becoming commonplace today. Setting a term of, say, fifteen years would ensure that federal judges would not lose all touch with reality through decades of ivory tower existence.
