U.S. President Joe Biden, with six months left in his presidency, offered sweeping proposals Monday to reshape the Supreme Court, calling for 18-year term limits for the nine justices who now hold lifetime appointments and enacting an enforceable ethics code for the court.
He also called for a constitutional amendment that would prohibit blanket immunity from prosecution for criminal acts presidents may have committed while in office once their terms in the White House have ended. Biden’s proposal is a rebuke to a recent Supreme Court ruling that granted former president Donald Trump and all future presidents immunity from prosecution for their official acts but not their unofficial ones.
Biden ended his 2024 campaign for another four-year term in the White House a week ago and has no immediate chance of enacting the Supreme Court changes. There is no political consensus on what measures, if any, should be enacted, with Republicans narrowly controlling the House of Representatives and likely opposing Biden’s proposals, and Democrats holding only a slim majority in the Senate.
Later Monday, Biden traveled to the Lyndon B. Johnson Presidential Library and Museum in Austin, Texas, where he marked the 60th anniversary of the signing of the Civil Rights Act by Johnson. The Civil Rights Act ensured voting rights for all Americans and attempted to end discrimination based on race, color, religion or national origin.
Speaking to a crowd of almost 1,000 attendees, Biden said America is “in a different era.” He denounced recent Supreme Court rulings, such as the Dobbs decision, which overturned Roe v. Wade. He said the rulings have “undermined long-established civil rights principles.”
As he ended his candidacy in the Nov. 5 election, he endorsed Vice President Kamala Harris as his successor, and she is now the likely Democratic presidential nominee against Trump. The White House said Harris endorses Biden’s Supreme Court proposals.
When the Biden court proposals first surfaced two weeks ago, before he ended his reelection effort against Trump, the Republican standard bearer derided them.
“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,” Trump posted on his Truth Social site. “We have to fight for our Fair and Independent Courts and protect our Country.”
Ahead of his speech in Texas, Biden laid out his proposal in a Washington Post opinion essay.
“This nation was founded on a simple yet profound principle: No one is above the law,” Biden wrote. “Not the president of the United States. Not a justice on the Supreme Court of the United States. No one.”
“There are no kings in America,” he said during his address in Austin.
But Biden said the Supreme Court’s recent 6-3 decision granting Trump broad immunity from prosecution for his official acts trying to upend his 2020 loss to Biden “means there are virtually no limits on what a president can do. The only limits will be those that are self-imposed by the person occupying the Oval Office.” The decision also effectively eliminated any chance that Trump would stand trial in the election interference case before this year’s election on Nov. 5.
In addition, Biden said that the court’s credibility has been undermined by “dangerous and extreme decisions that overturn settled legal precedents,” including a 2022 ruling upending a nearly five-decade U.S. constitutional right to an abortion. He also said the court is “mired in a crisis of ethics. 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 said.
Aside from controversy over its rulings – not uncommon in a highly politicized U.S. election year – Democrats have criticized two of the conservative justices for what they contend are ethical failings.
Justice Clarence Thomas initially failed to disclose lavish gifts and luxury travel paid for by a real estate magnate.
The wife of Justice Samuel Alito flew flags suggesting allegiance with rioters at the Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021, who were trying to upend congressional certification of Biden’s 2020 election victory over Trump.
Alito refused Democratic calls to recuse himself from cases involving Trump.
Last year, The Associated Press reported that institutions and organizations that hosted Justice Sonia Sotomayor for speaking engagements were encouraged by her staff to purchase copies of Sotomayor's books.
Biden suggested Supreme Court justices be limited to 18-year terms, not the lifetime tenures they now hold, and that presidents nominate new justices every two years. But it was not clear when Biden envisions such a plan would start or whether any of the three of the nine justices who currently have been on the court for more than 18 years – Chief Justice John Roberts, Thomas and Alito – would be subject to removal.
In his newspaper essay, Biden said, “I have overseen more Supreme Court nominations as [a] senator, vice president and president than anyone living today. I have great respect for our institutions and separation of powers. What is happening now 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.”
But enacting any changes before Biden leaves office, or even in a new Congress starting in January, will be difficult.
Term limits and an ethics code are subject to congressional approval, and the current Republican-controlled House is unlikely to support either. Both proposals would also likely require 60 votes to pass the Senate, and Democrats and four independents who vote with them only hold 51 seats in the 100-member chamber. Passing a constitutional amendment is even harder, including two-thirds support of both congressional chambers, or via a convention of two-thirds of the states, and then approval by three-fourths of state legislatures.
U.S. House Speaker Mike Johnson on Monday called Biden's Supreme Court reform proposal a “dangerous gambit” that would be “dead on arrival in the House.”
Biden wrote that the ethics codes should require justices 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.”
The term limits, Biden said, would make high court nominations “more predictable and less arbitrary.” He noted that the United States is the only major constitutional democracy that gives lifetime appointments to its high court justices.
During his successful 2020 presidential campaign, Biden rebuffed calls from liberals who advocated expanding the size of the court beyond its current nine justices to undercut conservative rulings on the court, where conservatives hold a 6-3 majority. Biden continued Monday to hold that position against expansion of the court
At the event at the LBJ library, Biden discussed his early memories of the civil rights movement. He said that he was studying for the bar exam when Martin Luther King Jr. was assassinated in 1968. He traced this to him becoming a public defender just a year later.
“Whether you run for office or not, you get engaged and you want to change things,” Biden said.
Later Monday, Biden was scheduled to go to Houston to pay his respects to U.S. Rep. Sheila Jackson Lee, who died on July 19.
VOA’s Dylan Ebs contributed to this report from Austin, Texas.
