Supreme Court justices have no fixed term. The length of a Supreme Court term is for life: once confirmed, a justice holds the seat until they retire, resign, are removed through impeachment, or die in office. The Constitution says federal judges “shall hold their Offices during good Behaviour,” which since the founding has been read to mean service without a set endpoint. In practice, the average justice serves about 16 years, but individual tenures have ranged from barely a year to more than 36.
Why the Constitution Sets No End Date
Article III, Section 1 created the federal judiciary and fixed its basic terms. Judges hold office during good behavior and receive a salary that cannot be reduced while they serve. Nothing in the text sets a maximum number of years, a mandatory retirement age, or a reelection requirement. The “good behavior” phrase came from English law and was understood at the founding to mean a lifetime appointment rather than service at the pleasure of the appointing president.
Alexander Hamilton defended that design in Federalist No. 78, calling permanent tenure an “indispensable ingredient” in judicial independence. His reasoning was practical. The courts control neither the budget nor the enforcement power; those belong to Congress and the executive. Making judges stand for reappointment or reelection would expose their rulings to political pressure and weaken the branch that was already the weakest. Life tenure, Hamilton argued, lets judges act as “bulwarks of a limited Constitution” against the other two branches.
This makes the federal bench unusual even inside the American court system. Most states require their judges to retire at a set age, usually between 70 and 75. Federal judges, including the nine on the Supreme Court, face no such cap.
How Long Justices Actually Stay
Life tenure does not translate into decades for everyone. The Court’s own records put average service at 16 years. The spread is wide. William O. Douglas sat for just over 36 years, from 1939 to 1975, the longest in Court history. John Rutledge served barely more than a year as an Associate Justice, from 1790 to 1791. More than 100 Associate Justices and 17 Chief Justices have served since the Court was founded.
How long any one justice stays comes down to health, personal choice, and sometimes political timing. Justices who hope for a like-minded successor sometimes retire while a president who shares their views is in office. Others stay until they physically cannot continue. Vacancies arrive on no predictable schedule, which is why one president might appoint three justices and another none at all.
Retirement and Senior Status
Federal law gives justices a defined way to step off the bench while keeping their pay. Under 28 U.S.C. § 371, a justice qualifies for retirement once age and years of federal judicial service combine to meet a sliding scale:
- Age 65 with 15 years of service
- Age 66 with 14 years
- Age 67 with 13 years
- Age 68 with 12 years
- Age 69 with 11 years
- Age 70 with 10 years
The two numbers always add to 80, so the formula is informally called the Rule of 80. A justice who qualifies can retire from active service and keep drawing the full salary of the office for life. As of 2026, that salary is $306,600 for an Associate Justice and $320,700 for the Chief Justice.
A retiring justice can also take senior status, a semi-retired role within the broader federal judiciary. A justice on senior status no longer sits on the Supreme Court or hears its cases but remains a federal judge and can take on other assignments. The Supreme Court seat is treated as vacant, and the president nominates a replacement.
Resignation is the alternative. A justice who resigns leaves the judiciary entirely, with no continued judicial role and no guarantee of ongoing salary. The vacancy opens immediately.
Disability Retirement
A separate statute, 28 U.S.C. § 372, covers justices who become permanently unable to do the job. The justice must submit written certification of the disability to the President; for an Associate Justice, that certification has to be signed by the Chief Justice. A justice with at least ten years of service receives the full salary for life. One with fewer than ten years receives half.
If a disabled justice is eligible to retire but refuses, the President can appoint an additional judge to carry the workload. When the disabled justice eventually leaves, the extra seat is eliminated rather than filled again.
Impeachment Is the Only Forced Exit
The Constitution offers one route for removing a justice against their will: impeachment. Article II, Section 4 makes the President, Vice President, and all civil officers subject to removal for “Treason, Bribery, or other high Crimes and Misdemeanors.” The process runs through both chambers of Congress and is intentionally hard to complete.
The House votes first on articles of impeachment, which pass by simple majority. The case then moves to the Senate for trial. Conviction requires a two-thirds vote of senators present. A convicted justice is removed immediately and can be barred from any future federal office.
Only one Supreme Court justice has ever been impeached. The House impeached Samuel Chase in March 1804, charging him with refusing to dismiss biased jurors, limiting defense witnesses in politically charged trials, and using the bench to advance a partisan agenda. The Senate tried him the next year. A majority voted guilty on three of the eight charges, but the tally fell short of two-thirds on every count. Chase was acquitted and remained on the Court until his death in 1811. The result established, in practice, that policy disagreements are not grounds for removal, and that line has held ever since.
Death in Office
Because nothing requires justices to leave, some serve until they die. A death in office creates an immediate vacancy with no paperwork required. The remaining justices continue the Court’s work, and the president nominates a successor who must be confirmed by the Senate before taking the seat.
Recess Appointments: The One Exception
One narrow situation produces a Supreme Court seat without lifetime tenure from day one. Under Article II, Section 2, the President can fill vacancies that come up while the Senate is in recess. A justice placed on the Court this way holds a temporary commission that expires at the end of the Senate’s next session. Staying on the bench past that point requires formal nomination and Senate confirmation.
Recess appointments were more common in the early republic, when the Senate spent long stretches out of session. President Eisenhower made the last ones to the Supreme Court in the 1950s, seating Earl Warren, William Brennan, and Potter Stewart before their formal confirmations. The practice has effectively disappeared because the modern Senate rarely takes a recess long enough to open the window.
Proposals to Impose Term Limits
The open-ended nature of a Supreme Court seat has drawn growing criticism. Opponents of life tenure argue that it concentrates too much power in individual justices for too long and turns every vacancy into a high-stakes political fight. Defenders say fixed terms would do exactly what the framers tried to prevent by making justices more vulnerable to political pressure.
Several bills have been introduced in Congress. The Supreme Court Term Limits and Regular Appointments Act of 2025 proposes 18-year terms with staggered appointments, so each president would fill one seat every two years. A justice who completes 18 years would move to senior status rather than leave the judiciary, and the bill would apply only to future appointees. A separate proposal, the Judicial Term Limits Amendment introduced in 2026, would amend the Constitution to cap all federal judges at 20-year terms and bar reappointment to the same court.
Whether Congress can impose term limits by ordinary statute or must go through a constitutional amendment is itself disputed. Article III’s “good behavior” language leads some scholars to argue that any fixed term requires amending the Constitution. The 18-year bill tries to work around that by moving justices to senior status rather than removing them from the judiciary. Neither proposal has advanced to a vote as of mid-2026.