President Biden is proposing term limits for U.S. Supreme Court justices, and of course they have no chance of seeing the light of day anytime soon, but still, good politics.
The proposal from the president, rolled out on Monday, also includes requirements for justices to disclose gifts, refrain from partisan political activity, and recuse themselves from cases in which they or their spouses have financial or other conflicts of interest.
Fat chance of Republicans agreeing to any of that, given the current high-court reality.
The proposed term limit, at 18 years, was decried by the Republican National Committee in a statement issued on Monday as being part of a scheme to pack the court with “far-left, radical judges.”
No mention in that statement from the RNC on how former Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell schemed to pack the Supreme Court with far-right radicals by holding up the appointment of Merrick Garland in 2015 and rushing a replacement to Ruth Bader Ginsburg in 2020.
It was that court-packing scheme that got our 50-50 country into having a supermajority Supreme Court.
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Biden also announced support for a constitutional amendment to eliminate the broad immunity for presidents created out of thin air by that court earlier this month.
“This nation was founded on a simple yet profound principle: no one is above the law. Not the president of the United States. Not a justice on the Supreme Court of the United States. No one,” Biden wrote in an op-ed published in the Washington Post on Monday.
Not only does none of this have a chance of getting passed this year, it’s hard to imagine Democrats getting support for it in the coming years without a 60-seat majority in the Senate, which isn’t close to being in the offing.
But what the Biden proposal does do is, it signals to the public that Democrats want to do something to undo the McConnell-led court-packing that threatens to undermine the underpinnings of democracy.
“I’m glad to see President Biden putting Supreme Court reform front and center. Most important item? A tough, enforceable and mandatory ethics standard for justices—not just a voluntary one. Enough with the secret sweetheart arrangements between justices and rich donors,” U.S. Sen. Tim Kaine, D-Va., said in a statement on Monday.
“Rampant, blatant ethics violations and increasing politicization have made it clear that the U.S. Supreme Court is broken, and that reform is urgently needed to restore Americans’ faith in the integrity of the Court,” said Virginia Congressman Don Beyer, one of the co-authors, along with California Congressman Ro Khanna, of the U.S. House bill that would bring about these changes in the Supreme Court.
“I have long supported reforming the Supreme Court to establish term limits and end lifetime tenures to ensure the Court remains a fair and impartial arbiter of justice. I’m glad to see the Biden-Harris administration prioritize the restoration of balance and public trust in our nation’s highest court, and continue to lead efforts to solve this problem in Congress alongside Rep. Khanna,” Beyer said.
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Chris Graham
