Biden wants to reform the Supreme Court but will it be an easy task?

On July 29th, The Washington Post published an opinion piece penned by Joe Biden in which the President explained in detail his plan to reform the Supreme Court and make sure that no president was above the law in the United States. 

President Biden may have withdrawn from the 2024 Presidential Election, but that doesn't mean he will spend his remaining time in office not tackling key issues that are facing the country, and Biden has set his sights on something monumental. 

The President wants to add a new constitutional amendment that will bring big changes to the country. Titled the 'No One Is Above the Law Amendment', the amendment would ensure that there is “no immunity for crimes a former president committed while in office,” Biden wrote. 

“I share our Founders’ belief that the president’s power is limited, not absolute. We are a nation of laws — not of kings or dictators,” Biden added. But he also proposed a second reform, one that would place term limits on Supreme Court Justices. 

Biden explained the term limits for U.S. Presidents have been in place for more than 75 years and wrote the same type term limit should be in place for the Supreme Court. He noted no other constitutional democracy gives lifetime seats to their high courts. 

According to Biden, term limits on Supreme Court Justices would ensure that the court’s membership turns over with regularity, adding that such a limit “would make timing for court nominations more predictable and less arbitrary.”

“It would reduce the chance that any single presidency radically alters the makeup of the court for generations to come,” Biden continued before adding he also was calling for a “binding code of ethics” for the Supreme Court, writing it was “common sense.”

“The court’s current voluntary ethics code is weak and self-enforced. Justices should be required to disclose gifts, refrain from public political activity, and recuse themselves from cases in which they or their spouses have financial or other conflicts of interest," Biden explained. 

Why Biden is choosing to focus his remaining months in office on Supreme Court reform shouldn’t be a surprise to anyone. He pointed to the “dangerous and extreme decisions” taken by the Supreme Court to overturn Roe v. Wade as one major problem. 

Biden also wrote that the court has been plagued by a “mired in a crisis of ethics” as well as several major scandals involving justices that have “caused the public to question the court’s fairness and independence.”

“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 wrote. “We now stand in a breach.” However, accomplishing his proposed goals won’t be easy.

Jordan Rubin of NBC News reported imposing term limits on Supreme Court Justices would face opposition from a Republican-controlled Congress and the current Supreme Court itself, which Rubin noted “ jealously guards its power.”

Biden’s proposed code of ethics would also face similar problems according to Rubin. Bloomberg’s Noah Feldman was less optimistic than Reubin and pointed out: “There is no reality in which Congress would pass the constitutional amendments required to enact the president’s proposals.”

Feldman also noted that it would be the Supreme Court that would ultimately “decide whether legislation imposing an ethics code is within Congress’s constitutional power,” something he insinuated the current court would not do. 

Turning to Biden’s proposed No One Is Above the Law Amendment, the major problem in getting such an amendment passed would be gaining support from two-thirds of the House and Senate, another situation that Feldman didn’t think would be possible. 

Biden’s reform plan is bold, but the challenges in getting his proposed ideas passed are also rife with danger and political opportunities for all those hoping for Donald Trump to win the election in November. 

Yes, the reforms Biden has proposed are necessary, and yes it is possible that public support for the reforms could pressure politicians and the Supreme Court to make them the new laws of the land, but it will be an uphill battle—though that doesn’t mean it's not worth trying to get done during Biden’s remaining months in office. 

Never miss a story! Click here to follow The Daily Digest.