President Biden’s move on Supreme Court reform adds weight to liberal resistance in the conservative majority bench, but his proposal is unlikely to go anywhere.
On Monday, Biden announced a three-pronged effort to implement term limits on the Supreme Court, a binding code of ethics and a constitutional amendment to counteract the recent presidential immunity ruling for judges.
“My fellow Americans, based on all my experience, I am clear that we need these reforms,” Biden said during a speech at the LBJ Presidential Library. “We need these reforms to restore trust in the court and preserve the system of checks and balances that are vital to our democracy.”
But there was a recognition from the White House that Biden’s proposals will require legislative action, something that seems deeply unlikely in a divided Congress.
“This will require some type of legislative action. And I think the great thing about Supreme Court reform is that a significant number of Americans also have very strong opinions on the issue,” Steve Benjamin, director of the Office of Public Engagement, told reporters aboard Air Force One on Monday. fair.
“The rules that apply to all other federal judges should also apply to the Federal Supreme Court. And I think we’re going to have to rely on members of Congress on both sides of the aisle listening to their constituents,” he added.
With little prospect of approval, Biden’s effort is widely seen as a messaging boost, especially given his lame duck status after ending his re-election bid.
Democrats, liberal advocacy groups and some watchdogs have long called for a crackdown as the court shifts to the right and faces ethical controversies. But many of these prominent advocates — such as Fix the Court, the American Civil Liberties Union and United for Democracy, a coalition of 140 organizations formed to respond to the court — said the White House did not involve them in crafting the three prongs.
Instead, a White House official said Biden relied on a 294-page report produced by a bipartisan commission created early in his term to study the issue of Supreme Court reform. That December 2021 report did not take a position on several proposals, but it did explore ideas such as court expansion, term limits, and a code of conduct and how each would be implemented.
Biden also consulted with Vice President Harris, who previously served as California’s attorney general and a member of the Senate Judiciary Committee.
However, outside advocates of reform are celebrating the president’s change.
“Hearing the idea that there would actually be some kind of accountability measure was, I think, one of the most important things we could have heard from the president,” said Common Cause President Virginia Kase Solomón, who attended Trump’s speech. Biden.
While Biden’s announcement marks a major shift, his proposal still doesn’t go as far as some liberal advocacy groups push for court expansion. Supported by progressives like Sen. Ed Markey (D-Mass.), they reacted to Biden’s proposal as merely a good first step.
Like Biden, Harris does not support expanding the court, a campaign spokesperson told The Hill.
But Republicans still see Biden’s proposal as a partisan attempt to overturn the conservative-majority court, which was cemented by former President Trump’s three appointees.
“It is telling that Democrats want to change the system that has guided our nation since its founding, simply because they disagree with some of the Court’s recent decisions,” House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-La.) wrote in the platform social
“This dangerous move by the Biden-Harris administration is dead on arrival in the House.”
Biden responded Monday, saying Johnson’s “thought died on arrival.”
In the Senate, Biden’s announcement was good news for Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Dick Durbin (D-Ill.), Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse (D-R.I.) and others who have long pushed for an ethics code binding and raised alarm after reports emerged last year when Justice Clarence Thomas and others accepted lavish trips and gifts from billionaires.
“I thank President Biden for highlighting the Supreme Court’s ethical crisis. Through our ongoing investigation, the Senate Judiciary Committee verified and reported lavish trips by sitting judges that were paid for by wealthy benefactors, including some previously unknown to the public,” Durbin said in a statement.
But Senate Republicans have had no appetite for Supreme Court reform, expressing confidence in the nation’s nine top jurists to police their own ethics amid recent controversies.
“No conservative justice has made any decision in any major case that has surprised anyone, so let’s stop pretending this is undue influence. It’s about Democrats gutting a court they don’t agree with,” Leonard Leo, a judicial activist who played a central role in the Supreme Court’s rightward shift, said in a statement.
Biden’s Supreme Court commission, in its December 2021 report, wrote that a code of conduct for the Supreme Court could be adopted internally by the justices or Congress could vote to impose a code of conduct on the court. The report also raised the idea of a disciplinary framework for the court that would be promulgated internally or approved by Congress.
In November, all nine judges signed a formal code after months of public pressure and closed-door negotiations. But Democrats, criticizing the code’s lack of an enforcement mechanism, continued to demand Congressional intervention.
Biden’s announcement comes four days after Justice Elena Kagan, one of the court’s liberals who has been among her most vocal colleagues in supporting stricter ethics rules, called the criticism “fair.” She suggested that a panel of lower judges could rule on ethical issues.
“I feel like, as difficult as it is, we could and should try to figure out some mechanism to do this,” Kagan said during a judicial conference in Sacramento, California.
Regarding term limits, the Biden commission report does not take a position, but establishes how they could be adopted, either by constitutional amendment or by statute. The report’s authors acknowledged that opponents of imposing term limits would cite the “intractability of these implementation issues as a reason not to pursue term limits.”
When asked Monday how he would get his plan passed, Biden told reporters, “We’ll figure out a way.”
This story originally appeared on thehill.com read the full story
