Supreme Court justices have a job for life. But some left the court to make their lasting mark

WASHINGTON — In the summer of 1941, James F. Byrnes became a Supreme Court justice. A little over a year later, he had had enough and left the court to play a major role in planning the nation’s economy during the war.

Over the past few decades, Americans have become accustomed to judges retiring after decades on the bench, or as judges Ruth Bader Ginsburg And Antonin Scaliawho died while on the bench. Ginsburg and Scalia are among nearly half of the 116 men and women who served as justices and died while still in office or within months of retirement.

Legislation pending in Congress would end life terms on the Supreme Court, though term limits are unlikely to take effect anytime soon, even with the support of Vice President Kamala Harris, along with many others in her party and a majority of AmericansBut people like Byrnes, who did not consider the court the pinnacle of their careers and who left to pursue other pursuits that would define their legacy, illustrate what justices would do if they could not spend the rest of their lives on the highest court in the land.

Byrnes was appointed a judge by President Franklin Roosevelt and later served on a small secret committee of government officials that recommended the use of the atomic bomb against Japan. He served as secretary of state before ending his long public career as governor of South Carolina, where he emerged as a segregationist critic of the court’s decision in Brown v. Board of Education, which ended segregation in public schools.

Like many justices until recently, Byrnes came to the court from the political world, having served as a senator and a member of Congress.

“It used to be that a lot of judges were former elected officials who always had this hankering to get back into the workforce. And that doesn’t exist anymore,” said Stuart Banner, a legal historian and law professor at UCLA. His new book, “The Most Powerful Court in the World: A History of the Supreme Court of the United States,” comes out in November.

Sandra Day O’Connor was the last justice to hold elected office, as a senator from Arizona. On the court today, every justice — except Elena Kagan — has been a federal appeals judge. Kagan was the Obama administration’s top Supreme Court attorney before joining the bench.

A major reason for the recent preference for appellate judges is the increased stakes attached to lifetime appointments to the Supreme Court. The paper trail of lower court decisions is seen as a reliable indicator of how someone would vote for the Supreme Court.

But the line between politics and the judiciary was not always so sharp. Chief Justice Earl Warren had been governor of California before coming to Washington. The first chief justice, John Jay, resigned to become governor of New York.

Whether term limits would mean a return of judges with more experience in public life is questionable.

But justices appointed for life may lose their “understanding of the broad social currents in the country,” said Cliff Sloan, who worked on Supreme Court nominations in the Clinton administration and helped screen potential nominees for President Barack Obama.

“Term limits would ensure some degree of measured turnover within the court, which would be useful in bringing diverse perspectives to the court,” said Sloan, who wrote about the court in his 2023 book, “The Court at War: FDR, His Justices, and the World They Made.”

Among the nine men who served as judges when the United States entered World War II were former members of Congress, the former chairman of the Securities and Exchange Commission and a former attorney general.

After the Japanese attacked Pearl Harbor, Byrnes and other judges felt they were sitting on the sidelines when they would rather be in the game.

Two days after Pearl Harbor, the court heard arguments in a case involving ships built 25 years earlier, during World War I, Banner writes in his book. The case “seemed of little consequence in the light of the news bulletins still streaming in from Pearl Harbor,” Banner later quotes Byrnes as saying.

And Byrnes wasn’t alone, Sloan said. At least five justices “made it clear to FDR that they would be happy to leave the court and take on war-related responsibilities,” he said.

One of those justices was William O. Douglas, the former SEC chairman. Douglas would serve longer than any other justice, more than 36 years. But he could leave the court after just five years.

In 1944, Douglas nearly became Roosevelt’s running mate for vice president, but was chosen instead by Harry Truman, who became president the following year when Roosevelt died.

Douglas remained at court even as the prospect of his candidacy was openly discussed. He had only had to look back a few decades for guidance.

Charles Evans Hughes, former governor of New York, left the court in 1916 only after he won the Republican nomination for president.

On election night in November, he reportedly went to bed thinking he had won the presidency. But he fell short by less than 4,000 votes in California, and President Woodrow Wilson was re-elected.

Hughes was far from finished with his public service. He eventually became Secretary of State and returned to the Supreme Court as Chief Justice in 1930. He was the first Chief Justice to preside over the court when the new building opened in 1935.