THE judiciary, wrote Alexander Hamilton in Federalist Paper 78, “may truly be said to have neither FORCE nor WILL, but merely judgment...[It] is beyond comparison the weakest of the three departments of power.” For much of American history, politicians saw the Supreme Court as a backwater. John Rutledge, one of the first justices appointed by George Washington, resigned to become chief justice of South Carolina. Not until 1935 did the court have a building of its own. Today it occupies a central and increasingly untenable position in American life (see Briefing).

The centrality stems largely from gridlock. As Congress has grown incapable of passing laws involving even straightforward political trade-offs, power has flowed to the executive and judicial branches. Political questions best settled by the ballot box—about abortion, for instance, or gay marriage—have become legal ones settled by nine unelected judges.

The untenability stems from the court’s growing partisanship. It was not always thus. Republican presidents appointed three of the 20th century’s greatest liberal jurists—Earl Warren, William Brennan and Harry Blackmun—as well as Anthony Kennedy, the recently retired “swing vote”. But today the court’s four conservative justices were all appointed by Republican presidents, the four liberals by Democratic ones. The nomination process has grown ever more poisonous.

Like a bar fight, it is hard to be sure who started it, but each punch leads to retaliation. Republicans point to Democratic tactics during the hearing for Robert Bork, a Reagan nominee. Democrats are the victims of the most recent blow—which was also the most shameless. In 2016 Republicans refused even to hold a hearing for Merrick Garland, whom Barack Obama had nominated, denying the president a power that is granted to him under the constitution, and allowing Donald Trump to fill the seat instead.

Mr Trump’s second Supreme Court justice, Brett Kavanaugh, will be confirmed only because Republicans hold a two-seat majority in the Senate. Should they lose that majority in the Senate this autumn, and should another Supreme Court seat before long open up, Democrats will probably prevent Mr Trump from filling it. The norms that Republicans created for Mr Garland will be used to justify their behaviour. And on it will go.

This partisan ratchet is bad for the judiciary and bad for the country. It risks hobbling the court, in two ways. First, if the only time a president can fill a seat is when his party controls the Senate, then the court will spend long periods at less than full strength. Second, the court’s legitimacy depends on its reputation as a credible neutral arbiter.

The judgments of a court seen as just another nakedly political body, no different from Congress or the presidency, can easily be dismissed—or fought. Franklin Roosevelt mulled packing the court in the 1930s when it frustrated his New Deal ambitions. It is not hard to imagine a Democratic president and Congress doing the same in four years’ time, if five Republican-appointed justices repeatedly strike down the ambitious social programmes these politicians promised.

Breaking this cycle requires reform. Some have proposed radical solutions, such as making all of the roughly 180 federal appellate judges associate justices, and having nine of them drawn at random to hear and choose cases at the Supreme Court for a limited period—a term, at most. Defenders argue that this would make the court more deferential to precedent, and any one judge less able to spend years cutting a partisan path across the nation’s highest court. But it could also just push the political brawling down a level, so that every appellate nomination becomes a bloodsport. In any case, it is probably too drastic a change to be feasible.

A more workable change would be to appoint justices for single 18-year terms—staggered, so that each president gets two appointments per term—rather than for life. Each presidential term would thus leave an equal mark on the court, and no single justice would remain on the bench for 30 or 40 years. New blood would make the court more vital and dynamic. A poll taken in July showed widespread bipartisan support for term limits. So long as former justices were prevented from standing for office, becoming lobbyists or lawyers after stepping down from the court, this would be an improvement.

Some fear that term limits would simply entrench the court’s political centrality by making it an issue in every election. But that bridge has already been crossed. “You have to vote for me,” Mr Trump told a rally in 2016. “You know why? Supreme Court judges. Have no choice.”

What better way for Americans to start finding a path back towards civil politics than reminding themselves that bipartisan institutional reform remains possible?