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“President Joe Biden said Monday that ‘extremism’ on the U.S. Supreme Court is undermining public confidence in the institution and called on Congress to quickly establish term limits and an enforceable ethics code for the court’s nine justices. He also called on lawmakers to ratify a constitutional amendment limiting presidential immunity.” AP News
Here is the op-ed by Biden advocating for the reforms. Washington Post
The left supports the reforms, arguing that they are both good policy and popular.
“In my view, the most important component of Biden’s package is his proposal to change Supreme Court terms from lifetime to 18 years, and, with the consistent rhythm of that span, guarantee each president precisely two appointments. The design of the reform is to obviate the Armageddon quality of current confirmation battles. Lifetime appointments create very high stakes, leading to carefully curated fairly young nominees who can serve 40 years or more and have enormous, longstanding influence…
“Term limits would prevent the imbalance that results if one president makes many appointments and others make few. Democrats are understandably frustrated at the bad luck — and GOP obstructionism — that allowed Republican presidents to choose six of the current nine justices, in a country in which more people identify as Democrats than as Republicans and in which Democratic presidential candidates have won the popular vote in seven of the last eight elections.”
Harry Litman, Los Angeles Times
“The court’s approval hit a record low — just 38 percent — in a Fox News poll that was conducted after the court granted Trump partial criminal immunity in early July for allegedly trying to steal the 2020 presidential election. That represented a 20-point drop in approval in the same poll from an all-time high of 58 percent in March 2017 — which just so happened to precede the confirmation of Trump’s three appointees…
“More than 75 percent of respondents in the Fox poll — including a large majority of Republicans — also said that they support 18-year term limits for the justices. Even assuming that GOP support softens if — or when — Republican politicians mount a serious counter-offensive, the figures are undeniably striking at a time when Americans are hard-pressed to find major policy issues that they largely agree on.”
Ankush Khardori, Politico
“Biden could have chosen radical action—for example, ‘packing the court.’ That would have meant adding a few justices to wipe out the conservative advantage. Interestingly, that provocative action is somewhat doable. Article III, Section 1 of the Constitution grants Congress power over the structure of the court and stipulates only that the body ‘shall consist of one Chief Justice and such other Justices as the Congress may from time to time ordain and establish.’…
“He could have also tried to use the Dems' current advantage in the Senate to elevate to the court Attorney General Merrick Garland, whose 2016 blocking as President Obama's nominee stands as a monument to hypocrisy: The Republicans insisted almost a year before the presidential election was not enough time, then saw no problem confirming Amy Coney Barrett weeks before the 2020 election, basically because they could. Biden did none of those things. Instead, true to his reasonable self, he's calling for reforms that no reasonable person should oppose.”
Dan Perry, Newsweek
The right opposes the reforms, arguing that they are a partisan attempt to reverse Supreme Court decisions.
The right opposes the reforms, arguing that they are a partisan attempt to reverse Supreme Court decisions.
“If we saw this in any other country in the world — a president frustrated with rulings of his country’s top court trying to remove the judges — we’d call it the authoritarian coup that it is. Remember the massive protests, covered lovingly by the American press, when Benjamin Netanyahu tried to rein in the power of the Israeli Supreme Court? And that was responding to a court that has no constitutional powers to overrule its parliament…
“Biden notes that ‘the United States is the only major constitutional democracy that gives lifetime seats to its high court Justices.’ That’s a good thing. We’re America. Our system is the best. Our Constitution has lasted longer than any of the others. Why would we want to imitate the constitutional histories of Germany or France?…
“None of the Democrats are even bothering to conceal that this is aimed directly at changing the Court’s personnel in order to change its rulings… They played by the rules, they lost, and now they want to overturn the table.”
Dan McLaughlin, National Review
“As a matter of basic legitimacy, foundational rules of government should be fashioned without knowing which party or faction will benefit from, or be harmed by, them. The term-limits idea, in contrast, is obviously crafted to undo the effect of Democrats losing the 2016 election and handing Donald Trump three Supreme Court appointments. (The left wasn’t agitating for term limits when the late Ruth Bader Ginsberg, who joined the court in 1993, had already served more than 20 years — they were cheering her on.)”
Rich Lowry, New York Post
“The President’s claim that the Court is currently ‘mired in a crisis of ethics’ is simply false. Justice Thomas failed to disclose that he flew on a friend’s private aircraft before the Judicial Conference changed its rules to require that judges disclose such flights. He violated no judicial rules. No one has come up with any evidence that the Court’s rulings, or any Justice, has been influenced by gifts or other outside influence…
“This is an invitation for partisans to besiege the Court with complaints, however trivial. If you want to know how that would go, consider that last month the 11th Circuit Court of Appeals stopped accepting duplicative complaints about Judge Aileen Cannon, who is sitting on the Donald Trump documents case. The circuit court received more than 1,000 complaints in a week as part of what it called an ‘orchestrated campaign.’…
“If Mr. Biden and Democrats were really concerned about ethics in government, they’d impose a total ban on Congress of all gifts, trips to conferences at fancy resorts, speaking fees, or anything else that provides even the appearance of a conflict of interest. But they won’t because the Members enjoy those perks and their anger at the Court has nothing to do with ethics. They are using ethics as a political ruse to gain more influence over the Court and its decisions.”
Editorial Board, Wall Street Journal
