Democrats set their sights on the Supreme Court in November

Democrats are turning their fire on the Supreme Court following this week’s monumental ruling that granted former President Trump broad immunity from criminal prosecution, hoping that a focused messaging campaign on the bench could turbocharge campaigns up and down the ballot before of the November election. elections.

Democrats are putting forward a series of reform proposals, some more aggressive than others, that they hope to adopt if voters give them a majority at the polls in the House. The list includes efforts to apply term limits to Supreme Court justices; establish a formal – and enforceable – code of ethics that judges must respect; increase the number of judges on the court; and grant Congress greater oversight powers over its conduct.

Some lawmakers would go a step further, calling for the impeachment of several conservative judges who have refused to recuse themselves in cases where they appear to have conflicts of interest.

Neither proposal is expected to become law, given growing expectations that Democrats will lose control of the Senate, and perhaps the White House, next year.

But House Democrats are nonetheless pushing the reforms in an effort to cheer up voters concerned that the Supreme Court has become too activist — and too irresponsible — since conservatives won a 6-3 majority. under Trump.

Highlighting that strategy, the Biden administration this week launched a seven-figure advertising buy to draw attention to the Supreme Court’s presidential immunity ruling, Axios reported Wednesday. And Democrats in Congress also hope that the public reaction to a series of conservative decisions — notably the 2022 decision to eliminate constitutional abortion rights — will bring voters to their side.

“They have unleashed fury across America and there is nothing they can do to stop it,” House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries (DN.Y.) said last week.

Here are five reform ideas that Democrats are pushing heading into the November elections.

Congressional Oversight

Perhaps the least controversial of the proposals is the notion that Congress should create new oversight authority over the court — a change that has been endorsed by party leaders like Jeffries.

Under current legislation, higher court judges largely police themselves when it comes to ethical issues, including deciding whether to recuse themselves from cases where there are conflicts of interest, or even the appearance of such conflicts. .

Democrats have been up in arms since reports emerged that the wife of Justice Clarence Thomas had been a prominent player in Trump’s efforts to overturn the 2020 election results, and that flags associated with conservative political movements – including the campaign ” Stop the Steal” by Trump – flew to both of Judge Samuel Alito’s homes.

Both justices have refused calls to recuse themselves from cases related to the January 6, 2021 attack on the Capitol, including the recent presidential immunity case.

Democrats have several bills designed to apply new layers of scrutiny to the court.

Some would directly grant new oversight powers to Congress. Others would establish an investigative branch within the Supreme Court to explore allegations of unethical conduct and report findings to Congress.

It’s unclear what strategy Democratic leaders would pursue if they took control of the House, but they promise action would be swift.

“At a minimum, in our system of checks and balances with separate and co-equal branches of government, it is the responsibility of Congress to exercise responsible oversight over the judicial branch,” Jeffries said earlier this year. “And I certainly think that the first opportunity we have to do just that, we will not evade oversight, but we will engage in it.”

code of ethics

Another proposal gaining traction in the Democratic Chamber of the House is the creation of a formal code of ethics to which judges would be bound. This idea is not new, but it has gained traction in the wake of reports that Thomas accepted millions of dollars in travel benefits and other gifts from a conservative billionaire, Harlan Crow, who has a long history of donating to Republican causes.

Thomas initially did not report the gifts on financial disclosure forms as required — an omission he called an inadvertent oversight.

Under pressure – and with public confidence in the Supreme Court dwindling – the court in November adopted a first-of-its-kind Code of Conduct designed to clarify appropriate behavior and help salvage the institution’s increasingly deteriorating reputation. A key provision of the code says that judges must “avoid impropriety and the appearance of impropriety in all activities.”

However, critics said the effort fell short of the reforms needed to control behavior they consider corrupt, not least because the code does not include any enforcement mechanism. In response, Democrats on the House Judiciary Committee formed a working group to advance a series of specific judicial reforms, including a bill — the Supreme Court Ethics, Transparency, and Reckoning Act — that adopts a code of ethics with a instrument of execution.

“We have a Supreme Court that is out of control and is pretty much motivated by power and politics,” Rep. Hank Johnson (D-Ga.), who led the task force and sponsored the ethics bill, said Wednesday Monday by phone. “And that needs to change.”

Term Limits

Once confirmed by the Senate, Supreme Court justices serve indefinite terms that can – and often do – last a lifetime. Many Democrats say this arrangement promotes a system in which judges are out of touch with changing public sentiments and are not held accountable for overt misconduct. They want to limit the tenure of judges – a proposal, sponsored by Johnson, would limit terms to 18 years – to ensure a faster turnover of both judges and the ideologies they defend.

Rep. Glenn Ivey (D-Md.), a former professor at the University of Maryland School of Law and now a member of the Judiciary Committee, noted that judges in his home state are subject to term limits and mandatory retirement at age 70. In the wake of the court’s immunity ruling, he said, Congress should consider similar restrictions on Supreme Court justices.

“I admit I wasn’t really thinking about something as dramatic as term limits or something along those lines. But given the direction they seem to be going — and the removal of guidelines, not just for them, but now for the president — I think maybe we need to engage here on a different level,” Ivey said.

“There are variations of what they could be,” he continued. “But to the extent that the court is now the same kind of polarized institution that the political branches are, I think it’s probably something we really should be doing.”

Pack the court

Liberal Democrats have pushed for years to expand the number of justices on the Supreme Court, an effort that took center stage after the bench overturned Roe v. Wade. Wade and who is getting another jolt of energy following the presidential immunity ruling.

“I support expanding the Republican Supreme Court because it is the surest way to finally balance this corrupt right-wing body. I urge my colleagues to support the expansion,” Rep. Bill Pascrell (DN.J.) wrote on social platform.

Two other progressives — Johnson and Cori Bush (D-Mo.) — cited their legislation, the Judiciary Act, in reacting to Monday’s ruling.

The legislation, which is supported by several liberals in both chambers, would add four seats to the Supreme Court, making the court a 13-judge body.

Johnson said the additional justices would help balance the court’s conservative bent and bring it back into line with contemporary public sentiment.

“Right now, the court is full of right-wing extremists… and they are taking our country in a direction that goes against the common good. It is against our democracy. And it’s a display of raw power,” Johnson told The Hill in an interview. “What they are doing is transferring power to themselves, to rich corporations and to the executive branch. This is upsetting the delicate system of checks and balances on which our democracy depends.”

“And so we cannot sit back and allow this to happen,” he continued. “These judges have a lifetime mandate. … [Some have another 10-20 years on the bench]. And so the quickest solution is to dilute the authority of these right-wing, power-hungry ideological extremists. We can do this by adding judges.”

Impeachment

A less likely — but more flashy — path Democrats could take to fight back against the Supreme Court is impeachment of the court’s conservative justices, an idea that several liberals are pushing.

Last month, Rep. Rashida Tlaib (D-Mich.) took to the House floor and called for Thomas and Alito to be impeached. Most recently, Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (DN.Y.) made headlines when — shortly after the high court published its presidential immunity ruling — she said she plans to introduce articles of impeachment when the House returns to session in next week.

“The Supreme Court has been consumed by a corruption crisis beyond its control,” Ocasio-Cortez said when announcing her plans. “It is up to Congress to defend our nation from this authoritarian capture.”

Ocasio-Cortez has certainly been vague on the details — she hasn’t said which judges she plans to target, nor whether she intends to force a vote on the issue — but the mere mention of the idea marks a dramatic escalation of the situation. Democrats’ scrutiny of conservatives on the bench.

Ocasio-Cortez’s office did not respond to repeated requests for more information.

The congresswoman could go after all six conservative judges, three of whom were nominated by Trump. Or she could just try to fire Thomas and Alito over her ethical concerns.

“These corrupt judges continue to deprive us of our rights while accepting bribes from billionaires with business before the Court,” Tlaib, who also supports term limits, a binding code of ethics and an expansion of the court, said this week by and -mail. “We need urgent action in Congress to hold these extremists accountable.”

Not all Democrats, however, are on board.

Ivey said both Thomas and Alito should have recused themselves in the immunity case — Thomas’s connections in particular “are classic conflicts of interest,” he said — but also stopped short of calling for impeachment.

“I think it’s a bridge too far,” Ivey said.

There is very little precedent for such a drastic measure. Former Supreme Court Associate Justice Samuel Chase was impeached in 1805, making him the only member of the bench to receive the sentence. The Senate, however, acquitted him of the charges.

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