He faced a nasty confirmation fight and barely made it to the Supreme Court on a 52-48 vote, but Justice Clarence Thomas will get the last laugh as he closes in on breaking the record on years served.

According to an actuarial report on the high court, Thomas, 68, would be the first to serve more than 40 years if he stays on the court until he's 83, breaking the 36-year record of Justice William O. Douglas, the famed Franklin D. Roosevelt pick.

In fact, he would break the record in 2028, after serving 37 years. At that point he would be 80.

With younger judges such as Trump nominee Neil Gorsuch now the trend, the report from the Oliver Wyman firm shows that future presidents will have a far less frequent chance to name justices to the Supreme Court, and it's possible two-term presidents will get shut out.

The current average is for 49 judges to be named to the court every 100 years. The new average, factoring in younger judges, is just 25.



The firm studied the impact of an 18-year term limit and found that the appointment rate would return to 49 every 100 years. But it also would raise the chances to 41 percent that just one president could name a majority of Supreme Court justices.

This is the report's discussion of Thomas:

Obviously, the reason there will be relatively few new appointees over the next 100 years boils down to longevity—judges will likely stay on the court longer. The average tenure of the justices over the next 100 years will be about 35 years versus 18.4 years for the past 100 years (excluding the sitting justices; the tenure is 18.1 if you include the sitting justices). Justice William O. Douglas, appointee of Franklin Roosevelt, served the longest, with 36 years on the bench. But he will almost certainly lose the title of longest-serving judge, given the presence of Justice Clarence Thomas, who joined the court in 1991 at the age of 43. He has a 57 percent chance of serving on the court for 45 years, if he chooses to; a 34 percent chance of making it to 50 years; and a 2 percent chance of serving over 60 years.

Paul Bedard, the Washington Examiner's "Washington Secrets" columnist, can be contacted at pbedard@washingtonexaminer.com