President Joe Biden proposed three significant reforms to the Supreme Court, emphasizing his “great respect for our institutions and the separation of powers” but asserting that “[w]hat is happening now is not normal.”
Biden highlighted concerns over recent court decisions, including one granting former presidents broad immunity for crimes committed while in office, as well as ongoing ethics issues involving some justices.
Biden announced these proposed changes in an op-ed published in the Washington Post, coinciding with a report from the Annenberg Public Policy Center that detailed a “withering of public confidence in the courts,” including a “considerable drop in trust” in the Supreme Court.
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However, with Republicans controlling the House of Representatives, Biden’s proposals face significant challenges in gaining the necessary congressional support.
In a statement to the Tampa Free Press, the Republican Party Florida Chairman Evan Power said, “Biden/Harris appetite for absolute power is obvious. They attack political opponents with everything they have, including with the power of the federal judiciary system.”
“Now they are coming after our Supreme Court Justices in blatant disrespect for what our Founding Fathers understood to be important in the separation of power. The real threat to democracy are Biden-Harris,” said Power.
“Biden-Harris have no moral standing to speak about ethics. Like all leftists, Biden/Harris want to consolidate power to benefit their leftist ideological agenda. Biden-Harris are too extreme and definitely out of touch with what Floridians want and need,” Power concluded.
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Proposed Reforms
1. Constitutional Amendment to Eliminate Presidential Immunity
Biden’s first proposal is a constitutional amendment to clarify that former presidents do not have immunity for crimes committed while in office. Referring to the court’s decision in Trump v. United States, Biden wrote, “This ruling means there are virtually no limits on what a president can do.” He stressed that the foundational principle of the United States is that “no one is above the law.”
Amending the Constitution requires a two-thirds vote in both houses of Congress and ratification by three-quarters of the states, making this amendment extremely challenging to pass.
2. Term Limits for Supreme Court Justices
Biden also proposed term limits for Supreme Court justices, suggesting that each president appoint a justice every two years, with each justice serving an 18-year term. He noted that the United States is “the only major constitutional democracy that gives lifetime seats to its highest court,” contrasting this with other democracies that impose term or age limits.
Term limits, Biden argued, “would reduce the chance that any single presidency radically alters the makeup of the court for generations to come.” However, his proposal did not address logistical questions, such as implementation and whether term limits would require a constitutional amendment or could be established by statute.
3. Binding Code of Conduct for Justices
The third proposal involves instituting a binding code of conduct for Supreme Court justices, who are currently not bound by the same ethical standards as other federal judges. Biden criticized the court’s self-enforced code adopted last November as “weak.”
He insisted that justices should be “required to disclose gifts, refrain from public political activity, and recuse themselves from cases where they or their spouses have financial or other conflicts of interest.”
In his remarks at the recent U.S. Court of Appeals for the 9th Circuit conference, Justice Elena Kagan supported an enforcement mechanism for the Supreme Court’s ethics code, echoing Biden’s call for greater accountability.
Biden’s proposals come nearly four years after he promised during the 2020 presidential campaign to form a bipartisan commission to study Supreme Court reforms. This commission released its report in December 2021, laying the groundwork for the current proposed changes.
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