(TND) — President Joe Biden’s proposals for Supreme Court reform could be as much a political play and a move for legacy as an effort to restore public confidence in the justices.
Biden said Monday that he wants Congress to institute term limits for Supreme Court justices and pass a constitutional amendment establishing that the president is not immune from criminal prosecution.
The amendment would be a direct reaction to the court’s recent ruling that found former President Donald Trump and other presidents are afforded presumptive immunity from prosecution for all official acts.
He also wants to see a new, binding code of conduct for the Supreme Court.
The justices adopted their own code of ethics in the face of criticism last fall. But Biden said that’s “weak and self-enforced.”
The president wants to require justices to disclose gifts and refrain from public political activity and recuse themselves from cases in which they or their spouses have financial or other conflicts of interest.
“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,” Biden wrote in a Washington Post opinion article.
The high court’s reputation has taken a hit recently, and Biden said his proposals would “restore trust and accountability.”
Democrats accuse the conservative bench – six of nine justices were Republican nominees – of allowing politics to influence big decisions, such as the 2022 ruling that overturned Roe v. Wade and the fundamental right to abortion.
And then there have been reports of undisclosed trips and gifts from wealthy benefactors to some justices.
Peter Loge, the director of the School of Media and Public Affairs at George Washington University, said the “noncynical” reason Biden proposed the reforms was because he thinks they are the right thing for the American people.
But could they be seen as sour grapes over court decisions that haven’t gone the way Democrats want?
“Obviously, that's the Republican narrative,” said Oklahoma State University politics professor Seth McKee.
Speaker Mike Johnson dismissed Biden’s proposals as a politically motivated grudge against the court.
“It is telling that Democrats want to change the system that has guided our nation since its founding simply because they disagree with some of the Court’s recent decisions,” Johnson said on social media. “This dangerous gambit of the Biden-Harris Administration is dead on arrival in the House.”
McKee called the proposals “smart politics,” giving the new presumptive Democratic nominee, Vice President Kamala Harris, new talking points that she can fold into the abortion issue on the campaign trail.
And McKee said the criticism of the court is warranted.
“They truly are undermining the confidence of the institution,” he said of the justices.
The Pew Research Center said last summer that the share of Americans with a favorable opinion of the Supreme Court had declined to its lowest point in surveys going back over 35 years.
And Gallup found that both approval and trust in the Supreme Court are near historic lows.
Biden said the U.S. is the only major constitutional democracy that gives lifetime seats to its high court justices. He wants to see presidents appoint a justice every two years to spend 18 years in active service.
A poll from a couple of years ago by The Associated Press and NORC Center for Public Affairs Research found that over two-thirds of Americans support Supreme Court term limits.
Loge said legislation takes a long time, sometimes years and multiple congresses, before becoming law.
While Biden’s reforms aren’t likely to go anywhere before he leaves office, Loge said the ideas could take root and lead to “a more meaningful conversation” in Congress down the road.
“The Supreme Court's approval rating has absolutely plummeted. So, it wouldn't be necessarily heroic to pluck off a few Republicans” and pull off a floor vote on the Supreme Court reforms using a legislative maneuver called a discharge petition, McKee said.
But that’s far from actual passage for any of the proposals.
“And we're in campaign mode right now,” McKee said. “So, who's going to spend a lot of time doing that when they're trying to get reelected?”
Loge said the proposals set up another way for Harris and the Democrats to make a contrast with Republicans this election.
“Democrats want to make the point that the U.S. Supreme Court is acting in ways that restrict individual rights, specifically women's access to abortion, and those actions were taken by unelected conservative judges,” Loge said.
And he said it could force Republicans to spend time defending the actions of the conservative justices as opposed to talking about the issues that are more likely to resonate with GOP voters.
“The Republicans would rather be talking about immigration and inflation than defending, you know, private trips and sweetheart loans,” Loge said.
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