Limit high court terms, Huckabee says

Prospective presidential candidate Mike Huckabee called Saturday for the imposition of term limits on U.S. Supreme Court justices, saying the nation's founders never intended to create lifetime, irrevocable posts.

"Nobody should be in an unelected position for life," the former Arkansas governor said in an interview, expanding upon remarks he made during an hour-long speech at the Nixon Presidential Library in Yorba Linda, Calif.

"If the president who appoints them can only serve eight years, the person they appoint should never serve 40. That has never made sense to me; it defies that sense of public service," he said.

Such a move would require a constitutional amendment. Former Texas Gov. Rick Perry and Kentucky's Sen. Rand Paul, two other potential 2016 candidates for the Republican nomination, also have backed court term limits.

Huckabee said the Federalist Papers, written by Alexander Hamilton, James Madison and John Jay, supported his view that the nation's founders came close to imposing judicial term limits in the Constitution; they never could have imagined people would want to serve in government for decades, he said.

During his speech to hundreds of people at the library, Huckabee largely avoided talking about the presidential contest. He said Republicans could face an "extraordinary challenge" in competing with former Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton, the presumptive front-runner for the Democratic presidential nomination.

A Section on 03/29/2015

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