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The Constitution IS wrong -- no American judge should be appointed for life. The topic came around this past week both in relation to the passing of former Supreme Court Justice William Brennan and with Congressional rumblings that it is about time that the federal judiciary face a vote of confidence on a periodic basis.

Brennan, though he served only until a mind-robbing disease overtook him, and died a decade after casting aside his robe, near exemplifies the weakness of "justice-for-life" of the Supreme Court. The Court was drawn into the Constitution as nearly one-third of the "conscience" of the Federal government in an era within which it was not expected that doddering, sapped old age crept over octogenarian judges. Lifespans were briefer and the society humanely retracted from public service individuals who had the hint of slippage.

The era of Constitutional penning also coincided with a period of American history when "giants walked the Earth." There can be no mistaking -- Justice Brennan was neither "giant" nor kept from slippage in his four decades of seating, through seven Presidencies. If anything, his strict honing to the political agenda of the Left verifies his weakening in his last dozen years on the Court, and it was no compliment to hear a colleague say of Brennan that "he has forgot more about Constitutional law than most judges learn."

Justice Brennan passed at the same time that a number of Constitutional Conservatives in Congress made rattle that they would welcome a plan by which the Federal judiciary would face in effect "confidence" votes in the House. It is not expected that the unbroken tradition of appointing High Court members -- by the ruling White House resident -- soon will be broken, but the Federal judges of the lower courts, through which the most controversial issues must pass, would face "re-confirmation" on a periodic basis.

This change -- and it IS a Constitutional one, a "correction," if you will -- will redirect the judiciary toward its initially conceived role: that of passing yea or nay on select, narrow points of law. Regular reconfirmation of Federal judges will remind the "robes" that theirs is but to peruse law, not make it. No longer will the huge Federal judiciary establishment be able to function as a second legislating branch of the tripartite government, languidly writing legal precedence on a broad scale to be executed by the other branches of government. Decisions will become, if judges seek to be reaffirmed on the basis of their close adherence to the Constitution, ever more particular to the specific case upon which the judge is asked to rule.

Expansion of Federal judiciary decisions from case to remotely similar case will curtail. Upward thrust of a particular case's gaveling will cease moving to become a "new law of the land." It is just human nature to assume that a professional judge -- and they are legal professionals, not gods -- will seek to remain in his or her post by the nature of their discreet and subtle judgments, not by their lawmaking from the bench.

Still, the heftiest hitters of the legal profession are already swinging at this very timely and natural "correction" in the lifetime powers of Federal judges.

The president of the American Bar Association criticized members of Congress who have attacked judicial independence and said they are placing the justice system in serious jeopardy.

N. Lee Cooper, who heads the nation's largest legal association, said some members of Congress have proposed a constitutional amendment to replace federal judges' life tenure with a periodic reconfirmation process.

He said this would give Congress the right to decide "who stays and who goes." Such a process would "inevitably be partisan" and would demean the integrity of federal judges, Cooper said.

I'm sure Mr. Cooper did not fully comprehend the slap at the American electorate his words accomplished. How could a student of the American Constitution, such as an attorney, forget so easily that the Congress IS the American people, or was so designed in the Constitution to every two years reflect the wishes of the American voters?

How could a student of Constitutional phraseology fail to recall that, as the House is open to its own "reconfirmation" by the voters every twenty-four months, the Constitutional theory is that the sitting Congress very nearly as possible parallels the thoughts of its electorate? How could N. Lee Cooper, Esq., fumble so in recollecting that the Constitutional theory is that the PEOPLE elect the CONGRESS as representative of their most current opinion on the justifiability of the Federal government's actions?

I don't know how the ABA may, in good Constitutional conscience, oppose a thoughtful manner of evaluating Federal judges. Perhaps Congress's grumbling Conservatives should investigate a manner by which lawyers' licenses are also biennially reviewed and "reconfirmed" or rejected by the voters.

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