I think that term limits are becoming more important with longevity technology coming to the fore. While I do not believe that longevity technology is going stay in hands of the rich and powerful forever, they will surely be the first group that will use it extensively.
Even adding 15-20 years of working life would mean that 100 y.o. politicians or judges would become a normal occurrence.
For Democrats: would you like to Amy Coney Barrett to serve until 2072? For Republicans: would you like Sonia Sotomayor to serve until 2054?
In politics, a long tenure is a huge advantage. We should probably act now, before the interests of the current stakeholders are too entrenched.
We don't have longevity technology yet though, only "keep you alive whilst you get dementia" technology. I wouldn't want to live over 90, maybe not even over 80 - but we'll see what changes by then.
I agree with term limits though, but mainly to ensure that the politicians better represent those working in the economy. So many issues come from politicians effectively being idle landlords - completely divorced from the issues caused by the housing crisis and the damage that comes from the subsequent lack of economic mobility.
We cannot yet turn a 70 y.o. into a 50 y.o., no. We are nowhere near that kind of technology.
But we might be able to turn 70 y.o. into 67 y.o. relatively soon. In fact, there already was an experiment in humans which turned their epigenetic clock back 2,5 years by rejuvenating their thymuses.
(Of course, the complicated relationship between epigenetic clock and real internal state of the organism is not fully clear yet. I know. This might be a very imperfect measure.)
This kind of baby steps is going to compound. I am sort of afraid of the possibility that we will ignore the baby steps until their aggregated weight is unconquerable, much like the climate crisis, where any single added chimney meant "almost nothing", but all of them together over decades meant a lot.
A permanent but senile supreme court is an ideal substrate for permanent government; in 2100 the justices are the same ones from today, all bodies in vats, whose decisions are delegated opaquely to key party donors.
Even adding 15-20 years of working life would mean that 100 y.o. politicians or judges would become a normal occurrence. For Democrats: would you like to Amy Coney Barrett to serve until 2072? For Republicans: would you like Sonia Sotomayor to serve until 2054?
In politics, a long tenure is a huge advantage. We should probably act now, before the interests of the current stakeholders are too entrenched.