One lasting solution to the political drama of Supreme Court nominations? Term limits.

Supreme Court justices are not answerable to the people of the United States. Nominated by partisan executives and confirmed by partisan legislators, justices join a largely unaccountable third branch of the federal government that has in the past seized opportunities to overturn popular legislation enacted to protect voting rights and women’s rights, LGBTQ+ rights and labor rights, and that could in short order undermine the protections of the Affordable Care Act. For decades after the presidents and senators who empower them have left the political stage, justices determine the direction of the country.

That is the antidemocratic reality of the U.S. Supreme Court.

Members of the Judiciary Branch exercise outsize authority not because of their wisdom but because of the ostentation of life tenure. Based on the pretense that a justice who can serve for so long as he or she chooses will somehow be free of partisan and ideological pressures, this false construct has saddled the U.S. with rogue jurists who advance agendas decades after their presidential benefactors have left the White House.

This reality makes the Senate Judiciary Committee’s hearing on nominee Judge Amy Coney Barrett particularly unsettling. While much of the committee’s discussion has focused on immediate concerns – such as signals Barrett has sent about overturning the Affordable Care Act – the equally concerning issue is that Barrett, age 48 and in fine health, could easily be on the Supreme Court Bench in 2060. Barrett could still be determining the direction of this nation after the next 10 presidential elections.

Decades ago, now-Chief Justice John Roberts reflected on the challenge of having jurists defining the national experience a half-century after appointment. “Setting a term of, say, 15 years would ensure that federal judges would not lose all touch with reality through decades of ivory tower existence,” Roberts wrote. “It would also provide a more regular and greater degree of turnover among the judges.”

Concerns about life tenure are nothing new. A century ago, Wisconsin Senator Robert M. La Follette objected to “a judicial oligarchy.” He warned in 1922, “Today, the actual ruler of the American people is the Supreme Court of the United States. The law is what they say it is, and not what the people, through Congress, enacts.”

The court reforms proposed by La Follette, Theodore Roosevelt, Franklin D. Roosevelt, and others in the last century were thwarted.

Now, however, U.S. Rep. Ro Khanna, D-Santa Clara, believes the time is right to establish term limits for Supreme Court justices. Khanna has proposed the Supreme Court Term Limits Act, which would establish an 18-year term limit and set an appointment schedule.

“We can’t face a national crisis every time a vacancy occurs on the Supreme Court,” Khanna said. “No justice should feel the weight of an entire country on their shoulders. No president should be able to shift the ideology of our highest judicial body by mere chance.”

JOHN NICHOLS is a national affairs correspondent for The Nation.