Booker says reform will ‘restore a lot of legitimacy’ to Supreme Court

Sen. Cory Booker (D-N.J.) said Monday that Supreme Court reform will “restore a lot of legitimacy” to the court.

Booker said he supports “common sense” Supreme Court reforms during an interview Monday “Morning Joe” from MSNBC. This comes as President Biden reveals that will be supporting such changes to the nation’s highest court, including imposing term limits on judges.

Booker said Monday that he hopes Republicans will work with Democrats on these Supreme Court reform proposals, noting that people have been “talking about term limits on both sides of the aisle for a long time.”

“These are measures that we will have to take because what is happening to the court right now is that it is being delegitimized by the type of politics and partisanship of our time. We need high ethical standards. We need term limits, we need predictability. We need to end this arbitrary nature of appointments and people deciding whether they want to resign or not,” he said.

“These are common sense things that I think will really give the court a lot of legitimacy,” he added.

Booker explained Monday that term limits would bring the United States in line with other constitutional democracies around the world.

“We are an exception. In many ways we corrected this with the presidency by putting in term limits, but now we have lifetime appointments, which creates a system where a president appoints someone only when that person decides to step down,” he said.

“You create this arbitrary system where you often encourage people to stay too long. Giving term limits actually gives some regularity and predictability to our courts,” she added.

In an article for The Washington Post on Monday, Biden presented his proposals to reform the Supreme Court. These include establishing term limits for judges, approving a binding code of ethics for judges, and proposing a constitutional amendment to counter the high court’s recent ruling on presidential immunity.

“I have great respect for our institutions and the separation of powers. What is happening now is not normal and undermines public confidence in court decisions, including those that affect individual freedoms. Now we are at a gap,” Biden wrote in Monday’s op-ed.

Calls for Supreme Court reform have increased over the past year after reports revealed that Justice Clarence Thomas accepted tens of thousands of dollars in hospitality, luxury travel and other favors from a conservative donor. Other reports later found that Justice Samuel Alito accepted lavish vacations from wealthy benefactors without publicly disclosing it.

This story originally appeared on thehill.com read the full story