President Joe Biden called for Congress to back his proposals for two significant changes to the U.S. Supreme Court and a change to the U.S. Constitution.
In an op-ed published the morning of July 29, the president outlined his reasoning for pursuing changes that have been long-sought by progressive camps in U.S. politics.
“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,” the president wrote.
According to a White House official, President Biden will call for Congress to back term limits for Supreme Court justices and a code of ethics enforceable by the legislative branch.
He also will propose an amendment to limit the extent of presidential immunity afforded by the Constitution, proposing that former presidents be granted no immunity for crimes committed in office.
Citing his 36 years as a U.S. senator and former chairman and ranking member of the Judiciary Committee, President Biden said 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.
Amid an increasingly divisive climate ailing the United States, the Supreme Court has continued with its task to outline final rulings on many politically charged issues for the nation.
With the appointment of President Donald Trump in 2016 and his subsequent conservative-leaning court appointments, the reconfigured 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 president are, in principle, immune from prosecution for official acts.
Today, the president made clear his resolve to dedicate time from 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 comes a week after President Biden said he would be withdrawing from the 2024 presidential race in favor of a run by Vice President Kamala Harris.
In 2020, then-candidate Mr. Biden promised to create a commission to study potential changes to the Supreme Court amid progressive voices calling for expanding the Supreme Court. The commission published a 294-page report to the president in December 2021. President Biden has not acted on that report until now.
The president is scheduled to speak today on his plan from the LBJ Presidential Library commemorating the 60th Anniversary of the Civil Rights Act.
The move marks the first effort by a president to lead changes to the workings of the Supreme Court. It comes after years of progressive advocacy to push their preferred reforms on the judicial branch, to much resistance from the originalist views that are 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 be advantaged by the retirement times of justices.
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.
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 require 60 votes for passages 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 said 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,” he wrote on Truth Social. “We have to fight for our Fair and Independent Courts, and protect our Country.”
The former president also warned that any removal of presidential immunity for official acts of former presidents would risk politicizing prosecutions and undermine the office of the president.
