President Joe Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris stand on stage at the Democratic National Committee winter meeting, Friday, Feb. 3, 2023, in Philadelphia. (AP Photo/Patrick Semansky)q
- The President also wants a code of ethics for Justices and a constitutional amendment to restrict presidential immunity.
President Joe Biden, now a lame-duck, is calling for the end to lifetime appointments on the U.S. Supreme Court. His Vice President and presumptive Democratic Party nominee Kamala Harris quickly backed the plan.
The White House released Biden’s proposal on Monday as he was scheduled to speak in Austin, Texas on the 60th anniversary of the Civil Rights Act, ironically at the Lyndon Johnson Presidential Library.
Biden wants a system in which the President would appoint a Supreme Court Justice every two years to spend eighteen years in active service on the Court.
“Term limits would help ensure that the Court’s membership changes with some regularity; make timing for Court nominations more predictable and less arbitrary; and reduce the chance that any single Presidency imposes undue influence for generations to come,” the White House statement outlined.
The U.S. Constitution states that once appointed, Justices “hold their offices during good behavior,” which has been understood to be lifetime terms. Should Congress attempt to act on the proposal outside of a constitutional amendment, legal challenges are sure to follow.
However, it is widely believed that Congress, currently split with Republicans holding a majority in the House of Representatives and Democrats with the majority in the Senate, will not take up the proposal prior to the November general election, if at all.
In addition, President Biden wants Congress to pass “binding, enforceable conduct and ethics rules” aimed at requiring 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.
Democrats have been actively campaigning on making changes to the Supreme Court since former President Donald Trump, a Republican, appointed three Justices during this term in office. The calls for Court reforms within Democratic circles intensified after the overturning of Roe v. Wade in 2022, going as far as to push to expand or “pack” the Court from its current nine Justices.
A White House “fact sheet” distributed Monday morning claimed that the Court as currently constituted with six Republican appointees and three Democrat appointees “has gutted civil rights protections, taken away a woman’s right to choose, and now granted Presidents broad immunity from prosecution for crimes they commit in office.”
In actuality, the Supreme Court returned abortion policymaking to the states through its Dobbs opinion, a 2022 case out of Mississippi, and ruled earlier this summer that former President Donald Trump – and those who hold the office of President – are entitled to absolute immunity for actions that are exclusively within their authority under the Constitution. However, for official acts that do not fall under his exclusive constitutional authority, a president is entitled to presumptive immunity, and for unofficial acts, none.
READ MORE: Supreme Court rules Trump entitled to some immunity from federal prosecution
Yet, Biden contends that no such absolute immunity exists. He is now calling for a constitutional amendment – the No One Is Above the Law Amendment – that will state that the Constitution does not confer any immunity from federal criminal indictment, trial, conviction, or sentencing by virtue of previously serving as President.
The proposals released on Monday come as President Biden turns his attention to the campaign trail in support of Harris now that he has stepped aside. The general election is 99 days away.
