The Supreme Court recently encountered an unusual institutional problem: Four justices recused themselves from a case, leaving the Court unable to consider it. A solution for this unusual situation could come from a surprising place — enacting Supreme Court term limits that allow justices who have transferred to senior status to hear cases when sitting justices cannot.
The dispute, BMG Rights Management v. Vetter, concerned whether songwriters who reclaim their copyrights under federal law can recover rights worldwide. The episode may ultimately be remembered less for its implications for the music industry than for what it reveals about the Supreme Court’s structure — as well as how term limits could help prevent similar future situations.
The case arose from songwriter Cyril Vetter’s effort to reclaim worldwide rights to “Double Shot (Of My Baby’s Love),” a 1960s hit he co-wrote with Donald Smith. Major music companies, including BMG, asked the Supreme Court to review a federal appeals court decision recognizing the worldwide reach of those rights. Four justices — Ketanji Brown Jackson, Amy Coney Barrett, Neil Gorsuch, and Sonia Sotomayor — recused themselves from the case. They did not explain their recusals, but it may have been related to their book-publishing arrangements with Penguin Random House, whose parent company is affiliated with BMG. With only five justices eligible to participate, the Court lacked the six-justice quorum required by federal law. By default, the lower court’s judgment was affirmed without resolving the legal questions on their merits.
This illustrates a basic vulnerability in the current institutional design of the Court. Justices should not participate when a conflict of interest requires them to step aside. But the Court’s current structure offers no ready substitute when so many justices cannot participate. The result is that the Court is sometimes unable to perform its central function of resolving important legal disputes. Although this has happened only rarely, recent cases — including BMG Rights Management in 2026 and the 2025 copyright dispute involving Bertelsmann (the German media conglomerate that owns Penguin Random House) — demonstrate that the consequences are real.
Quorum is mandated by statute: “The Supreme Court of the United States shall consist of a Chief Justice of the United States and eight associate justices, any six of whom shall constitute a quorum.” If the Court declines to hear a case because it lacks a quorum, most often the lower court ruling remains in place without the Supreme Court resolving the underlying legal question. That may be unavoidable in a particular case, but the institution should not be needlessly vulnerable to a situation in which recusals prevent it from doing its work.
Term limits offer a practical way to strengthen the Court’s capacity to function. One version of this reform would have justices serve 18 years in active service on the Supreme Court before transitioning to senior status. This would not mean retiring from judicial office. Justices would retain their office, salary, and constitutional protections, but their duties would change. They would no longer regularly hear the Supreme Court’s cases and could instead serve on lower federal courts while remaining available to help the Supreme Court when needed, including filling in when another justice needs to recuse from considering a case.
