President Joe Biden (D) has called for major changes to the United States Supreme Court, including the imposition of term limits on Justices and the adoption of an official code of conduct.
Under the proposal advanced by President Biden on Monday, Justices would be permitted to serve just 18 years on the bench, allowing presidents to appoint a new Justice every two years.
Biden has also now endorsed creating a “binding code of conduct” for Supreme Court Justices, calling the move “common sense.”
Last November, the Court independently decided to adopt its own formal code of conduct in an effort to “dispel” misunderstandings and preserve the integrity of the Court.
[RELATED: Supreme Court Adopts Official Code of Conduct For First Time in the Institution’s History]
Although Biden’s official announcement of these recommendations came Monday, anticipation of these proposals began earlier this month.
Shapiro Professor of Public Interest Law at George Washington University Jonathan Turley wrote an op-ed in The Hill just before Biden dropped out of the presidential race, calling out his then-expected proposal to impose term limits on the Justices as being politically motivated.
“He then decided to run for reelection and faced a revolt in his party, including hysteria over his dismal polling numbers,” Turley wrote. “If those numbers were 10 points higher, the Supreme Court might be safe for another 10 years. However, it is now just another price for power.”
Turley went on to suggest that term limits are not only “completely removed” from the “left’s complaints” regarding the Supreme Court. He also pointed out an apparent irony in Biden calling for term limits amidst criticism over his own age.
“What is most striking about a term limits proposal is that it is completely removed from the substance of the left’s complaints,” Turley said. “Ironically, while many believe that President Biden is too enfeebled to serve as president, no one has credibly made that claim about the older justices.”
“Oral arguments show that members such as Justice Clarence Thomas are active and impressive in questioning counsel in oral argument,” he continued. “One can certainly disagree with Thomas’s jurisprudential views, but there is no basis to question his mental acuity.”
Turley then drew parallels between Biden’s proposal and President Franklin Delano Roosevelt’s (D) “court packing plan.”
“Term limits would hit conservatives harder than liberals on the court,” said Turley. “It is reminiscent of President Franklin Delano Roosevelt’s transparent and nonsensical 1937 effort to appoint a new justice for any justice who reaches the age of 70 and refuses to resign.”
“It just so happened that the age rule would negate the elderly ‘Four Horsemen’ who were standing in the way of his New Deal legislation and allow him to instantly pack the court with six new Democratically-selected members,” Turley wrote. “When the court suddenly began to approve his programs in what was called ‘the switch in time that saved nine,’ Democrats dropped the scheme.”
Click Here to Read Professor Turley’s Full Op-Ed
Leonard Leo, Vice President of the Federalist Society, has also criticized Biden’s plan to overhaul the operation of the Supreme Court.
In his remarks, Leo suggested that the motivation behind the proposed reforms is to counter the influence of a Court with which many of those on the left disagree. He went on to say that they would target “gifts and hospitality” for all government officials if they “were truly serious about ethics reform.”
“No conservative justice has made any decision in any big case that surprised anyone, so let’s stop pretending this is about undue influence,” Leo said. “It’s about Democrats destroying a court they don’t agree with.”
“If President Biden and the Democrats were truly serious about ethics reform, then they would ban all gifts and hospitality of any kind to any public official in any branch of government, starting with Congress, where the real corruption is,” Leo said. “They would close all of the loopholes that allow Members to travel on private jets to fancy hotels and restaurants.”
“With respect to judges, they would include the things where influence peddling is most present and dangerous — and that’s when the liberal Justices rub shoulders with influencers at places like law schools, bar associations, progressive think tanks and their conferences, and other groups and events funded by left-wing billionaires, where they support real vested interests in the work of the Court,” he continued.
“Let me be clear: If Democrats want to adopt an across the board ethics ban for all branches, I am in favor of that: no jets, no meals, no speaking honorariums, no gifts for anyone from anyone for any reason in any branch, starting with Congress,” Leo concluded. “Until they support that, let’s all be honest about what this is: a campaign to destroy a court that they disagree with.”
Ilya Shapiro, Director of Constitutional Studies and Senior Fellow at the Manhattan Institute, has also critiqued Biden’s proposal to reshape the Supreme Court, calling the move political and unnecessary.
“Politics has always been part of debates over Supreme Court nominations and machinations and Biden’s ‘reform’ proposal is no exception,” Shapiro wrote. “Term limits are popular—that they’d increase public confidence in the Court is the strongest argument for them—but they wouldn’t change how the Court operates and there’s no lawful way to do them without a constitutional amendment.”
“Ethics reform sounds good, but in this context it’s a solution in search of a problem and the justices earlier this year unanimously promulgated a new ethics code anyway,” continued Shapiro.
He also discussed a third element of the proposal advanced by Biden on Monday — a constitutional amendment effectively overturning the Supreme Court’s recent decision granting presidents broad immunity from criminal prosecution for their official actions while in office.
“And the Court’s presidential-immunity decision wasn’t so broad or groundbreaking to justify either Trump supporters’ crowing or his opponents’ wailing—and certainly doesn’t merit a constitutional amendment to change,” Shapiro said.
“In short, this is a case where a weakened president has been pushed by left-wing activists to propose radical changes to an institution that still enjoys more public confidence than any other at the federal level save the military,” he continued.
“Each time Democrats have broken norms in this area in the last two decades—from blanket filibusters of judicial nominations under Bush, to removing the lower-court filibuster under Obama, to forcing Mitch McConnell to end Supreme Court filibusters under Trump—it was unwise and redounded to their detriment,” Shapiro concluded. “This will be no different.”
<span class="dsq-postid" data-dsqidentifier="29700 https://www.themainewire.com/?p=29700">4 Comments
“It’s about Democrats destroying a court they don’t agree with.” It’s their MO on everything.
If Useless Joe wanted to do something for America he ought to support term limits for congress.
I don’t like the outcome, so let change the rules – Democrats
Typical Democrat swill. If you can’t win playing by the rules then change the rules.
One of the first things Maduro the Venezuelan dictator did upon coming to power was to expand their Supreme court changing the make up by adding his political judges so the court would not block his policies.
I don’t believe that the majority of the leftist out there have a clue as to what they are really voting for. Follow the crowd at all cost…