When fully effective, the Act would operate as follows. In the first congressional term, the president would have one, and only one, appointment to the Court whether or not a member of the current Court resigned, took senior status or died during that period. The same would be the case in every subsequent congressional term. Eighteen years later, after the ninth congressional term, the Court would have undergone a complete rotation of justices. Eighteen years of regular service on the Supreme Court is ample to guarantee judicial independence from the political branches. But it is short enough and certain enough to serve other equally important policies.

The proposed Act has the effect of giving equal weight in the appointment of justices to each presidential election. Once a transition period is completed, each four-year presidential term will result in two appointments to the Court. A longstanding deficiency of current arrangements is eliminated: the randomness of appointments to the Court in relation to presidential terms. Because vacancies now turn on the health, death or choice of individual justices, one president, largely at random, may get three appointments in a four-year term and another gets none. Every presidential election should have a roughly equal participation in the choice of justices.

The proposed Act would also substantially reduce two problems of strategic behavior: First, the incentive of a president to appoint young nominees to the Court who, it is hoped, will perpetuate the president's policy preferences for a generation or more; and, second, the efforts of individual justices to influence the appointment of a like-minded successor by timing a resignation before or after a particular presidential election. Reduction of the incentive to appoint younger justices may encourage presidents to appoint very distinguished and healthy older lawyers of great talent and experience, reducing the current bias against older appointees. The changes may also have the effect of reducing the acrimony and contentiousness of confirmation proceedings.

The proposed Act is consistent with the U.S. Constitution. Congress has broad authority, among other things, to create and abolish federal courts (other than the Supreme Court), determine the jurisdiction of federal courts (providing an uncertain minimum jurisdiction is left to the Supreme Court), establish rules regulating federal courts, provide the terms of employment of judges subject to the Compensation Clause, and prescribe procedures by which the federal judiciary may discipline itself. The Supreme Court's appellate (as distinct from original) jurisdiction is exercised "with such Exceptions, and under such Regulations, as the Congress shall make." Article III, Section 2. The constitutional limitations on this legislative authority are that the regulation must not violate the prescribed methods for appointment and removal of Article III judges and be consistent with the judicial independence protected by the Good Behavior and Compensation Clauses of Article II, Section 1.