President Joe Biden on Monday called for an overhaul of the Supreme Court and a constitutional amendment limiting the power of his own office — reforms that might not be implemented but demonstrate his priorities in his final months in office — in an op-ed Monday in The Washington Post.
“I served as a U.S. senator for 36 years, including as chairman and ranking member of the Judiciary Committee. I have overseen more Supreme Court nominations as senator, vice president and president than anyone living today," Biden wrote. "I have great respect for our institutions and separation of powers. What is happening now is not normal, and it undermines the public’s confidence in the court’s decisions, including those impacting personal freedoms. We now stand in a breach.”
Biden called for a constitutional amendment saying former presidents don’t have any immunity from federal criminal indictments, trials, convictions or sentencing.
"I share our founders’ belief that the president’s power is limited, not absolute," the president wrote. "We are a nation of laws — not of kings or dictators.”
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The amendment is in line with Biden’s recent statements that “no president is above the law,” a refrain he has repeated several times since the Supreme Court said some actions related to the duties of a president can’t be prosecuted. The decision favors former President Donald Trump in criminal cases against him and could enable other former presidents to avoid certain criminal charges going forward.
Biden also expressed support for Congress to create term limits for Supreme Court justices, saying he favors 18-year terms, which he believes would prevent one president from having multigenerational influence on the judiciary.
“Term limits would help ensure that the court’s membership changes with some regularity" and "reduce the chance that any single presidency radically alters the makeup of the court for generations to come," he wrote.
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In addition to term limits, Biden called on Congress to make the Supreme Court subject to the kind of enforceable ethics requirements imposed on other federal judges regarding gifts, political activities and financial dealings.
“This is common sense," he wrote. "The court’s current voluntary ethics code is weak and self-enforced."
The de facto Democratic nominee, Vice President Kamala Harris, issued a statement saying the American people must have confidence in a Supreme Court whose fairness has been called into question by numerous ethics scandals and decisions overturning long-standing precedent. She said the reforms being proposed would "help to restore confidence in the Court, strengthen our democracy, and ensure no one is above the law.”
Biden is scheduled to deliver remarks Monday afternoon at the Lyndon B. Johnson Presidential Library in Austin, Texas.
Biden will lay out his proposals at a celebration of the 60th anniversary of the Civil Rights Act, signed by President Lyndon Johnson in 1964. The event was rescheduled the day after the assassination attempt on Trump at a campaign rally in Pennsylvania on July 13. Biden had been expected to present his plans the following Monday but instead stayed at the White House during his administration’s initial investigation of the shooting.
In his address to the nation after having recovered from Covid-19 last week, Biden explained why he chose to end his re-election campaign and how he planned to spend his final months in office. He hinted then about supporting major changes to the Supreme Court.
“I’m going to call for Supreme Court reform because this is critical to our democracy,” Biden said from the Oval Office.
NBC News reported this month that Biden planned to endorse a series of reforms to the court and had notified members of Congress about his thinking.
Biden was reluctant to back significant changes to the Supreme Court earlier in his political career. The shift in his public posture toward court reform follows recent controversies involving Justices Clarence Thomas and Samuel Alito and decisions led by the conservative majority on issues like abortion rights — rulings Biden has heavily criticized. Biden told a crowd at a fundraiser last month that the Supreme Court “has never been as out of kilter as it is today.”
Just last week, Justice Elena Kagan became the first member of the court to call for a stronger code of ethics in remarks at an annual judicial conference in California on Thursday. She signed on to the Supreme Court’s new code of ethics last year, but in last week’s remarks she said it needs an enforcement mechanism.
“Both in terms of enforcing the rules against people who have violated them but also in protecting people who haven’t violated them — I think a system like that would make sense,” Kagan said.
Even with the presidential push for reforms, getting such legislation passed through Congress is unlikely. Before he called off his presidential run, Biden huddled with House Democrats, saying he would need their help to enact changes — and most likely need to persuade some Republicans to cross the aisle, given their majority in the House and Democrats’ narrow majority in the Senate.
Senate Democrats introduced Supreme Court reforms last year, but Republican opposition thwarted the effort last month.
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