President Biden Monday unveiled a sweeping plan for Supreme Court reforms, including term limits for justices, a binding ethics code and a constitutional amendment proclaiming that presidents are not immune from criminal prosecution.
The package would seek to undo a remarkably successful Republican push to forge a right-wing supermajority on the nation’s top court that has rolled back abortion and voting rights and made it much easier for former President Trump to avoid accountability.
“I have great respect for our institutions and separation of powers,” Biden argued in a Washington Post op-ed published Monday. “What is happening now is not normal, and it undermines the public’s confidence in the court’s decisions, including those impacting personal freedoms.”
Biden, who is a lame duck after announcing he won’t run for reelection, will elaborate on the plan later Monday at the Lyndon Baines Johnson Presidential Library in Austin, Texas, to mark the 60th anniversary of the Civil Rights Act.
The plan has next to no chance of passage in the Congress, where Republicans control the House and can block legislation in the Senate. A constitutional amendment, which would require ratification by three quarters of states, would be even tougher to pass given the polarization between red and blue states.
Democrats hope to use the proposal as a rallying cry for changes on the top court, which Republicans have effectively used to push their policy agenda on a range of issues in recent years.
The justices have also been rocked by a series of financial and conflict-of-interest scandals involving Justice Clarence Thomas and Justice Samuel Alito, both leading conservatives.
The plan would abolish the current lifetime appointments to the court and calls for a new system in which the president would appoint a new justice every two years for an 18-year term.
The goal is to avoid he political gamesmanship that has marked appointments by both parties and ensure a gradual evolution of views among the justices.
Biden also wants Congress to pass a code of ethics for the Supreme Court that would require justices to disclose gifts, refrain from public political activity and recuse themselves from cases in which they or their spouses have conflicts.
He urges Congress and the states to pass a constitutional amendment reversing the Supreme Court’s recent landmark immunity ruling that determined former presidents have broad immunity from prosecution.
Vice President Kamala Harris, who is running for president after Biden handed the Democratic baton to her, quickly backed the plan.
Trump has derided any plan for court reforms as a liberal scam. He boasts that his installation of three conservative judges delivered a generation of Republican dominance on the nine-judge court.
Led by Chief Justice John Roberts, the Supreme Court has issued a string of right-wing rulings in recent years including allowing rolling back legal abortion and watering down the Voting Rights Act, while erecting ever-higher obstacles to even the most common sense gun regulations.
Liberals accuse the top court of espousing its own brand of judicial activism that conservatives once decried.
Thomas has also sparked howls of outrage with reports that he accepted millions in secret gifts from GOP megadonors for everything from luxe vacations to private school tuition and even his elderly mother’s home.
Alito and Thomas have both refused to step aside from cases involving Trump’s efforts to overturn his loss in the 2020 election even though their wives are outspoken supporters of that scheme.
Alito’s wife hoisted a flag supporting the Jan. 6 attack on the Capitol at their home in suburban Virginia while Ginni Thomas texted White House officials urging Trump to resist the peaceful transfer of power to Biden.
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