Biden outlines plan to impose term limits for Supreme Court justices
President Joe Biden has suggested that United States Supreme Court justices should have term limits and a code of ethics to abide by after calling for Supreme Court reform during a primetime address last week.
In a piece published in The Washington Post on Monday, Biden outlined his “plan to reform the Supreme Court and ensure no president is above the law.” The guest editorial comes less than a week after the president identified Supreme Court reform as one of the priorities of the last six months of his term in office at a speech discussing his decision not to run for a second term.
“The Supreme Court’s 6-3 decision on July 1 to grant presidents broad immunity from prosecution for crimes they commit in office means there are virtually no limits on what a president can do,” Biden wrote. “The only limits will be those that are self-imposed by the person occupying the Oval Office.”
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The Trump v. United Statesdecision, which determined that “the President is absolutely immune from criminal prosecution for conduct within his exclusive sphere of constitutional authority,” was cited by Biden as one of many examples of how the Supreme Court was “not normal.”
Biden also denounced the 2022 Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organizationdecision, which he described as one of several “dangerous and extreme decisions that overturn settled legal precedents.”
The Dobbs ruling determined that the U.S. Constitution does not contain a right to abortion, reversing the 1973 Roe v. Wade decision that legalized abortion nationwide.
Biden also claimed that “the court is mired in a crisis of ethics.” Without going into specifics, he maintained that “Scandals involving several justices have caused the public to question the court’s fairness and independence, which are essential to faithfully carrying out its mission of equal justice under the law.”
“For example, undisclosed gifts to justices from individuals with interests in cases before the court, as well as conflicts of interest connected with Jan. 6 insurrectionists, raise legitimate questions about the court’s impartiality,” he added. Biden cited his ethics concerns and the aforementioned court rulings as reasons why he saw the need for “three bold reforms to restore trust and accountability to the court and our democracy.”
Biden’s first proposal involves a constitutional amendment titled the "No One Is Above The Law Amendment" that “would make clear that there is no immunity for crimes a former president committed while in office.”
His second reform would impose “a system in which the president would appoint a justice every two years to spend 18 years in active service on the Supreme Court.”
“The United States is the only major constitutional democracy that gives lifetime seats to its high court,” he stated. “Term limits would help ensure that the court’s membership changes with some regularity. That 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’s third proposal would create a “binding code of conduct for the Supreme Court” that would require justices to “disclose gifts, refrain from public political activity and recuse themselves from the cases in which they or their spouses have financial or other conflicts of interest.”
The push for Supreme Court reform reflects outrage on the political Left at the makeup of the body, which consists of six justices appointed by Republican presidents and three justices appointed by Democrat presidents.
While many calls for Supreme Court reform that began following the replacement of far-left Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg with conservative Supreme Court Justice Amy Coney Barrett and continued following the Dobbs decision sought to expand the number of justices to dilute the power of the nominally conservative majority, Biden’s proposals did not embrace that idea.
As a proposed constitutional amendment, the "No One Is Above The Law Amendment" would require the support of two-thirds of members of both the U.S. House of Representatives and the Senate. From there, it would then go to the states for ratification. Three-fourths of the states must ratify the amendment in order for it to take effect.
Biden noted in his WaPo piece that “we have had term limits for presidents for nearly 75 years” as he made the case that “we should have the same for Supreme Court justices.” The 22nd Amendment to the U.S. Constitution established term limits for presidents.
As the Constitution is silent on the length of terms for federal officials, establishing term limits for Supreme Court justices would likely require a constitutional amendment as well. House Speaker Mike Johnson, R-La., indicated in a Facebook post Monday that Biden’s proposals are “dead on arrival” in the chamber.
Former President Donald Trump, the Republican nominee for president who appointed three of the nine justices on the Supreme Court, offered a similar analysis in an appearance on Fox News’ “The Ingraham Angle” Monday night.
“It’s going nowhere,” Trump said. “They need 75 percent, and it’s going nowhere. He can’t get it. He knows that too.”
Biden did not elaborate on how the implementation of term limits for the Supreme Court justices would work. However, three of the Republican-appointed justices on the bench, Clarence Thomas, Samuel Alito and John Roberts have already served for at least 18 years, while two of the three justices appointed by Democrat presidents, Sonia Sotomayor and Elena Kagan, will celebrate their 18th anniversaries on the bench in the next few years.
While progressives remain outraged about the Dobbs decision and the Trump v. United States ruling, the Supreme Court has sided with liberals at times. In the 2023 Allen v. Milligandecision, the Supreme Court decided that the map of congressional districts in Alabama violated federal law by not including a second majority-minority district.
The Allen ruling decision resulted in the creation of a second majority-minority congressional district in Alabama, which will likely result in Democrats gaining an additional seat in Congress. The Supreme Court also unanimously dismissed a challenge to the Food and Drug Administration’s approval of the abortion pill earlier this year.
Ryan Foley is a reporter for The Christian Post. He can be reached at: ryan.foley@christianpost.com
