Lame Duck Biden Pitches SCOTUS Term Limits, End to Presidential Immunity

On Monday morning, President Joe Biden announced a new plan to reform the U.S. Supreme Court (SCOTUS) and create a new constitutional amendment — two moves seen as largely political gestures from the lame duck president.

President Biden’s SCOTUS plan, which would enact term limits and various ethics rules, seems to be a retaliation of sorts for recent decisions that have opposed the administration’s policies, including the overturning of Roe v. Wade and a more recent decision that undermined the Biden Justice Department’s ability to prosecute former Republican President Donald Trump.

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“In recent years, the Supreme Court has overturned long-established legal precedents protecting fundamental rights. This Court has gutted civil rights protections, taken away a woman’s right to choose, and now granted Presidents broad immunity from prosecution for crimes they commit in office,” said President Biden.

In his announcement, Biden laid out two major changes he wants to make to SCOTUS.

Throughout U.S. history, Supreme Court Justices have not been subject to term limits, with Justices instead serving until they die or retire.

Biden hopes to change that and impose term limits on the court, claiming that the change will stop a single administration from imposing “undue influence” on the American future, while calling the current system, where a president nominates a new justice only when one dies or retires, “arbitrary.”

The demands for term limits on the Supreme Court has arisen on the left only very recently and only in response to former President Trump’s appointment of three conservative Justices to the Court.

Currently, the majority of Supreme Court justices are conservative-leaning, and three, Justices Neil Gorsuch, Brett Kavanaugh, and Amy Coney Barrett, were all appointed by Trump.

Unlike Trump, who was able to appoint the replacement for a liberal justice, Biden has been unable to shift the court further in his party’s favor.

Biden’s only appointment was Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson, who replaced the liberal Stephen Breyer and, notably, could not answer questions about what she believes a woman is.

Biden’s proposal would give justices 18-year terms, which would be staggered to allow a president to appoint a new justice every two years.

Biden’s plan also calls for an enforceable code of conduct for Justices, which would prevent them from participating in public political activity, require them to recuse themselves from any case in which they or their spouses have a conflict of interest, and require them to disclose gifts.

In addition to calling for SCOTUS reforms, Biden also pushed for a new amendment to the U.S. Constitution, called the “No One Is Above the Law Amendment,” which would remove presidential immunity and effectively allow a former president to be prosecuted for official actions taken while he was in office.

The president does not have the power to unilaterally reform the court, nor to implement a constitutional amendment, meaning none of Biden’s proposed changes to the U.S. system of government have much chance of occurring.

If Biden wants to implement his SCOTUS reforms before he leaves office, he will need to work with the Republican-controlled House, which will likely hinder his efforts.

A constitutional amendment would also be extremely difficult, as it would require the approval of 38 out of the 50 states.

Vice President Kamala Harris would likely face similar challenges were she to push forward with the plans in the event she is the 2024 Democratic presidential nominee and wins election in November.

“President Biden and I are calling on Congress to pass important reforms — from imposing term limits for justices’ active service, to requiring justices to comply with binding ethics rules just like every other federal judge,” said Harris in a statement, “And finally, in our democracy, no one should be above the law. So we must also ensure that no former president has immunity for crimes committed while in the White House.”