US President Joe Biden.
Credit: Reuters Photo
President Joe Biden on Monday proposed sweeping changes to the US Supreme Court, including term limits and a binding code of conduct for its nine justices, but opposition from Republicans in Congress means the proposals have little chance of enactment.
Biden called on Congress to pass binding and enforceable rules that would require the 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. He also urged the adoption of an 18-year term limit for the justices, who currently serve life tenures.
Biden called for the revamp, as well as a constitutional amendment to eliminate broad presidential immunity recognized in a July 1 Supreme Court ruling involving former President Donald Trump, in an opinion piece published in the Washington Post.
He will speak on the issue at the presidential library of former President Lyndon B. Johnson in Austin, Texas, later on Monday during an event marking the 60th anniversary of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, a landmark federal anti-discrimination law.
"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 the opinion piece.
Biden last week ended his reelection bid and endorsed Vice President Kamala Harris as the Democratic candidate to face Trump, the Republican nominee, in the November 5 US presidential election. Biden, who earlier in his presidency convened a commission to study Supreme Court changes, has appointed one of the nine justices, liberal Ketanji Brown Jackson.
"In our democracy, no one should be above the law. So we must also ensure that no former president has immunity for crimes committed while in the White House," Harris, a former prosecutor and California attorney general, said in a statement on Monday.
The leading Republican in Congress, House of Representatives Speaker Mike Johnson, called Biden's proposals an effort to "delegitimize the court," and said the changes would not be considered by the chamber, which is controlled by his party.
"This dangerous gambit of the Biden-Harris administration is dead on arrival in the House," Johnson said in a statement.
The Republican National Committee called the proposals part of a scheme to pack the Supreme Court with "far-left, radical judges."
Since the court in 2020 reached a 6-3 conservative majority, cemented with Trump's three appointees, it has moved American law rightward.
In its immunity ruling, the court decided that Trump, in a federal criminal case involving his efforts to reverse his 2020 election loss, cannot be prosecuted for actions that were within his constitutional powers as president. It was the court's first recognition of any form of presidential immunity from prosecution.
The court in recent years also has ended its recognition of a constitutional right to abortion, expanded gun rights and rejected race-conscious collegiate admissions, as well as blocking Biden's agenda on immigration, student loans, COVID vaccine mandates and climate change.
New code of conduct
Unlike other members of the federal judiciary, Supreme Court justices have no binding ethics code. Disclosure laws require them to report outside income and certain gifts, though food and other "personal hospitality" such as lodging at an individual's residence are generally exempted.
The court in November adopted its first code of conduct after revelations about Justice Clarence Thomas accepting undisclosed travel from a wealthy benefactor. Justice Samuel Alito also has faced criticism from Democrats after reports that flags associated with Trump's bid to undo his 2020 loss flew outside his homes in Virginia and New Jersey. Alito has said his wife flew the flags.
Critics have called the new code of conduct insufficient because it lets justices decide for themselves whether to recuse from cases and provides no enforcement mechanism.
Legislation would be required to impose term limits and an ethics code, and it is unlikely to pass Congress, with Democrats controlling the Senate and Republicans the House.
The constitutional amendment proposed by Biden to make clear that having served as president does not guarantee a person immunity from federal criminal indictment, trial, conviction or sentencing would be even more difficult to enact.
It would require two-thirds support in the House and Senate or a convention called by two-thirds of the states, and then ratification by 38 of the 50 state legislatures.
Trump is the first former president to have been indicted - charged in four separate cases, though one was dismissed - and the first to have been convicted. A jury in New York state court in May found him guilty of felony charges involving hush money paid to a porn star to avoid a sex scandal before the 2016 election.