Thinking about Justice Sotomayor's inevitable lifetime appointment by a grumbling Senate brings to mind other "lifetime" deals.  The first and most important is the one that is universally ignored.  This is marriage.  You think, when in the throes of passionate expectation, that a life-time of bliss will be your reward. Our experience is that most marriages fall apart consensually, often bitterly, because the "fit" was not right in the first place.  Our beliefs about the person (whether it is hetero or unisexual) color our misgivings as though there were no misgivings for that life-time of bliss obscured hard thinking.

Judges get life-time appointments - in some instances.  Our Supreme Court for the whole U.S.A. is appointed this way.  Some other places make judges just like sheriffs or mayors and maybe dogcatchers.  They have to run on a political platform and make promises about how they will conduct themselves - if elected.

That is where there is no difference between the appointee and the individual elected by a majority vote.  The appointee gets grilled just like Ms Sotomayor is experiencing these past few days.  The nominee for an elected position has either months or years to show his or her stuff to the voters.  Each is scrutinized, mostly by the opposition, to find weak spots they can attack.  The wise nominee will avoid direct answers and most times a soft reply will turn aside questions that are meant to do harm.

My question about a lifetime appointment is that the language is imprecise.  Does a Judge, sitting on a bench, ever get too old to merit the life-time appointment?   By the time dotage sets in many mistakes may be attributed to his or her nodding off or not understanding what is going on.  Judges do their work off the bench and interact with each other judicially and socially.  They can tell if one of their members no longer is fit to sit next to them and participate in nation-shaking decisions.

But, judges, like couples in a bad fit, need an out if the superannuated justice is nodding off.  Divorce is provided for the latter but Judges can go on and on and on.

I like appointments better than elections for judges and perhaps dog catchers.  But life-time should be more carefully defined than "good behavior" as the yardstick by which to judge a judges' performance.  Trying to figure out that performance before hand is a tricky business.  It seems to boil down to which party has the 60 % filibuster-proof majority.