Joe Biden wants to enact term limits for the Supreme Court, overturn its recent ruling on presidential immunity, and impose ethics rules on justices, but most would require amending the Constitution, and none will clear the GOP-controlled House.
WASHINGTON, D.C. (LifeSiteNews) — Outgoing Democratic President Joe Biden says he intends to use his final months in the White House promoting a plan to “reform” the U.S. Supreme Court and its most recent decisions, an apparent bid to seize on left-wing discontent with a handful of recent rulings that does not currently have a chance at actually becoming law.
Biden’s proposal, which he has said is based on three months of conversation with “constitutional scholars,” is comprised of a constitutional amendment stating that the “Constitution does not confer any immunity from federal criminal indictment, trial, conviction, or sentencing by virtue of previously serving as President”; a federal law establishing eighteen-year term limits for Supreme Court justices; and a federal law containing “binding, enforceable conduct and ethics rules that require Justices to disclose gifts, refrain from public political activity, and recuse themselves from cases in which they or their spouses have financial or other conflicts of interest.”
“In recent years, the Supreme Court has overturned long-established legal precedents protecting fundamental rights,” said the White House. “This Court has gutted civil rights protections, taken away a woman’s right [sic] to choose, and now granted Presidents broad immunity from prosecution for crimes they commit in office.”
Vice President Kamala Harris, who recently took over for Biden as Democrats’ presumptive presidential nominee this November, endorsed the plan as key to solving what she called a “clear crisis of confidence facing the Supreme Court.”
The U.S. Constitution provides that justices “shall hold their Offices during good Behaviour,” meaning for life unless impeached, which cannot be changed by an act of Congress and would take a constitutional amendment. That and the amendment Biden does propose would require either a two-thirds supermajority in both chambers of Congress or a convention called by two-thirds of the state legislatures, then ratification by popular vote in 38 states.
Republican Speaker of the House Mike Johnson has called the plan “dead on arrival” in the GOP-controlled chamber, prompting Biden to alarmingly reply, “That’s what he is.” The president later clarified he meant “his thinking” was dead on arrival and did not intend the comeback as a threat.
While no part of the plan has a chance of becoming law in the next six months, it continues Democrats’ catering to liberal activists’ hatred of the Court over a string of high-profile rulings that have gone against their interests, including overturning Roe v. Wade in 2022; and this summer affirming some presidential immunity for Donald Trump and overturning the Chevron doctrine that gave significant regulatory discretion to unelected bureaucrats; as well as ongoing smears against the personal integrity of conservative Justices Clarence Thomas and Samuel Alito.
Biden announced earlier this month he was dropping out of the 2024 race and endorsing Harris to take over as Democrat presidential nominee, following weeks of public and private calls to step aside ever since a disastrous televised debatemagnified longstanding concerns about the 81-year-old president’s mental infirmityand convinced many the problem could not be obscured well enough to keep him politically viable. Harris has reportedly obtained enough delegate pledges to secure the nomination, though she too has faced discontent with her own job performance and doubts about her own odds of victory.
So far, RealClearPolitics and RaceToTheWH indicate that the change in Democrat nominee has somewhat narrowed the gap between the candidates but not yet upended the trajectory of the race; Trump maintains his lead both in aggregations of the national popular vote and in the Electoral College.
The Democratic National Convention, where Democrats’ choice for president is supposed to be formally nominated, begins August 19 in Chicago, Illinois.
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