President Joe Biden called for reforms to the Supreme Court in a speech at the Lyndon Baines Johnson Library and Museum in Austin, Texas, to commemorate the 60th anniversary of the Civil Rights Act.
“We need a mandatory code of ethics for the Supreme Court, and we need it now,” he told the audience on July 29. “Today, I’m calling for three bold reforms to restore trust and accountability to the court.”
President Biden outlined his proposed reforms, including one potential constitutional amendment: 18-year term limits for justices, a binding code of conduct, and an amendment to reverse the recent ruling that gives presidents immunity for official acts while in office.
He said the 18-year limit was proposed by a bipartisan commission that analyzed various term limit structures. The code of conduct would require justices to disclose gifts, refrain from public political activity, and recuse themselves from cases in which they or their spouses have a financial or other conflict of interest.
“Fellow Americans, based on all my experience, I’m certain we need these reforms. We need these reforms to ensure trust in the courts [and] preserve the system of checks and balances that are vital to our democracy.”
He said that by July 4, 2026, the country will celebrate the 250th anniversary of the signing of the Declaration of Independence and that the moment will be “not only about our past but about our future.”
Supreme Court Reform Op-ed
In an op-ed published on July 29, the president called for Congress to back his proposals for two significant changes to the Supreme Court and a change to the U.S. Constitution, while outlining his reasoning for pursuing changes that have long been sought by progressive camps.Citing his 36 years as a U.S. senator and former chairman and ranking member of the Judiciary Committee, President Biden wrote that while he has “great respect for our institutions and separation of powers,” what is happening now in the United States is “not normal, and it undermines the public’s confidence in the court’s decisions, including those impacting personal freedoms.”
“We now stand in a breach,” the president wrote.
In recent years, the Supreme Court released some decisions that sparked criticism from Democrats and progressives, including its overturning of Roe v. Wade and, more recently, its 6–3 ruling that presidents and former presidents are, in principle, immune from prosecution for official acts.
On July 29, the president made clear his resolve to dedicate time during his last five months in office to back changes that he says can restore trust and accountability in both the Supreme Court and the presidency, a White House official told The Epoch Times.
The announcement was made a week after President Biden withdrew from the 2024 presidential race and endorsed Vice President Kamala Harris.
In 2020, as a presidential candidate, he promised to create a commission to study potential changes to the Supreme Court as some progressives called for the expansion of the Supreme Court, an act President Biden opposed. The commission published a 294-page report to the president in December 2021. President Biden hasn’t acted on that report until now.
The move is the first significant effort by a president since Franklin D. Roosevelt’s progressive court-expansion plan to advocate changes to the workings of the Supreme Court. President Roosevelt’s push for a more favorable court ultimately failed in the face of significant opposition.
President Biden’s proposal follows years of progressive advocacy to push their preferred reforms on the judicial branch, which has met with resistance from those who hold originalist views widely preferred within the GOP.
The White House says that term limits for Supreme Court justices would help ensure that the timing of court nominations is more predictable and less arbitrary, reducing the chance that any single presidency is advantaged by the retirement times of justices.
During his July 29 speech, President Biden criticized Senate Republicans for blocking President Barack Obama from nominating a justice during an election year in 2016, but then nominating Amy Coney Barrett weeks before the 2020 general election.
Additionally, a binding code of conduct for justices, including the disclosure of gifts, refraining from public political activity, and recusal from cases with conflicts of interest, would improve public trust in the institution, the White House added.
Critics of the code of conduct have expressed concern that oversight of justices by Congress would politicize the court.
For President Biden to be successful, his proposals would need 60 votes for passage in the Senate. His proposed constitutional amendment faces additional hurdles, including two-thirds support in both chambers of Congress, or by a convention of two-thirds of the states, and then approval by three-fourths of state legislatures.
Former President Donald Trump previously wrote on his social media platform Truth Social of such efforts in the legislative branch:
“The Democrats are attempting to interfere in the Presidential Election, and destroy our Justice System, by attacking their Political Opponent, ME, and our Honorable Supreme Court. We have to fight for our Fair and Independent Courts, and protect our Country.”
The 45th president also alleged that any removal of presidential immunity for official acts of former presidents would risk politicizing prosecutions and undermine the office of the president.
