President also says presidential immunity for crimes should be removed and ethics rules for justices should be stricter
Joe Biden has called for a series of reforms to the US Supreme Court, including the introduction of term limits for justices and a constitutional amendment to remove immunity for crimes committed by a president while in office.
In an op-ed published on Monday morning, the president said justices should be limited to a maximum of 18 years’ service on the court rather than the current lifetime appointment, and also said ethics rules should be strengthened to regulate justices’ behavior.
The call for reform comes after the supreme court ruled in early July that former presidents have some degree of immunity from prosecution, a decision that served as a major victory for Donald Trump amid his legal travails.
“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,” Biden wrote.
The problem is that doing any of these things in a matter which will stick will require amendments, because that is the only process that this compromised Supreme Court might respect. (And even that is not a given: I wouldn’t put it past them to say that any amendment not passed by a Founding Father is invalid, or something).
So the first thing that needs to be done is to “pack” the court. (I prefer the term “unfuck”, but that is less PC). This can only be done if Democrats take the Presidency and both houses of Congres, and nuke the filibuster. But it’s that important. Dial the fucker up to 13, then go to Republicans and say “OK, now we need to work to fix the courts together. You can decline, but if you do you will watch Momala appoint 4 additional justices under the old rules, to lifetime terms, and bank on getting your own trifecta to re-fuck the Court”.
While we have the amendment process open, we also need to set a limit to how long Congress can deliberate on any appointment, not just SC. Once a President makes an appointment, the Senate shouldn’t be able to sit on it indefinitely. It should be guaranteed to get a vote in the full Senate within X legislative days. The Senate can vote it down, of course, but then the President can nominate someone else. Republican Senators challenged Obama to make a centrist pick for the SC, and he did. Mitch and Lindsey sat on it for months because they knew that it would pass if it went to the full Senate. This process basically gives the Senate Leader a veto over both the President and the will of the overall Senate, and cannot be what the Founders intended.
The trick with an amendment is even if you get the House and Senate, you still face ratification from the states.
So 38 out of 50 state legislatures need to ratify the amendment.
To put that in perspective… in 2020, Biden and Trump split the states evenly. 25/25, Biden also took D.C.
To get to 38, you’d need ALL 25 Biden states + 13 Trump states.
Even getting all 25 Biden states isn’t guaranteed because of those, 6 have Republican controlled state houses.
So now you’re looking at needing as many as 19 Trump states?
Exactly. The path to an amendment is super difficult, and Conservative states have no incentive to do so while they have so thoroughly captured the Supreme Court. That’s why you pack the Court first. Appoint 4 liberal justices in their early 40s to lifetime appointments, and you will see much more of a push from those Conservative states for reforms.
The democrats have no intention of getting this to pass. They just want to use it to get out the vote. The constitutional ammendment process was created to expect both parties to work together, that just isn’t the way things are anymore. So passing a constitutional ammendment is pretty much impossible.
Right. The only way to get Republicans to consider an amendment is to make the status quo untenable to them, so they prefer change.
That’s why you pack the court with 4 40-yr-old Liberals who can use the current rules to push the Court leftward for 30+ years . That will get them to change the rules quickly.
I’m not from the US so sorry if this is a dumb question, but why would this push the court leftwards for 30+ years? Wouldn’t the republicans just pack the court at the next opportunity to swing it back in their favour?
Packing the court requires an act of Congress, which the President would then need to sign. So it’s not practical to do in a partisan fashion unless one party has the Presidency and both Houses of Congress. If Democrats get that in the next Congress, and expand the Court, then Republicans need to win them all back at the same time to mess with it.
And without an amendment, the only practical way to mess with the court is to increase it.
Appointing a justice can be very difficult to do if your party doesn’t control the Senate. If Democrats control the Senate or the presidency, then Republicans won’t be able to stack the court.
Yeah, but then the dems won’t want the change since they control the court at that point. Both sides are in this for themselves, that is the nature of a system based on popularity.
The constitutional amendment system was created without parties in mind at all.
Unless it’s to patch a massive oversight in the Constitution like the 25th amendment.
Or to prevent Congress from raising their own salaries with immediate effect, like with the 27th amendment.
I think demonstrating how this is a massive oversight first will get MANY states on board with fixing the supreme court.
The last ammendment was in 92. The political landscape has changed since then. Both sides run mainly on opposing the other, which means bipartisan anything is very unlikely. They couldn’t even pass an immigration reform bill because the conservatives didn’t want to give Biden a win. This would be even harder.
Spot-on analysis!
Exactly. Biden is still playing by the old rulebook.
I prefer the term “unfuck”, but that is less PC
Unfortunately, it is impossible to be unfucked. Nobody can ever unfuck you.
I don’t know I unfuck things almost as frequently as I fuck them up so…
Momala. haha, love it.
I don’t get it.
Harris’s stepkids call her “Momala”. I think she needs to lean into the nickname, particularly since the couchfucker is implying she is somehow unqualified because she doesn’t have kids of her own.
Kamala, Momala
If these reforms actually get implemented, Biden’s legacy will be enshrined as one of the most positively influential presidents ever.
If only he didn’t have the blemish of the Israel situation on his record, which (to be fair) he’s inherited-but has not handled well at all. I’m sure it’s way more complicated than what we know, but no matter what, it’s a bad thing to have attached to his legacy.
Up to 180,000 Palestinian deaths isn’t complicated. Btw, it’s a Tuesday in America.🇺🇸
Biden did not “inherit” the Israel situation. He made it a core part of his political career to be a staunch supporter of Zionism, ethnic cleansing and genocide against Palestinians.
This is Biden in 1986 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FYLNCcLfIkM
“Where there not an Israel, the US would have to invent an Israel”
Biden has always been driven by a desire to cause destabilization and war in the Middle East, killing millions of people through various US policies and invasions during his long political career.
I think the term is used here to indicate that Israel is a core part of America’s foreign policy, and regardless of who the president is, they have to deal with that legacy.
If Biden just stumbled into politics 15 years ago, maybe one could say that. But he made staunch support for Israel integral to his political career for over 40 years. And he also didn’t hold back on the “why”. It is to serve US interests which for the Middle East have been destabilization and brutal violence.
Regardless of who the president is, regardless of their time in politics, or their influence on foreign policy, the United States of America has shown again and again that it supports Israel in everything that it does. 40 years ago Joe Biden took a 40 year old idea and ran with it.
Biden was critical in making it that core part. Not just during his presidency.
18 years is a bit steep but glad it’s even being pushed in the first place
Huh I’ve been saying this for years. Even commented it a while back on lemmy. hope they can get it through but don’t have super high hopes unless the next couple of election cycles lean heavily towards the Democrats.
It has nothing to do with election cycles, it must be bipartisan because it’s a constitutional amendment that requires ratification. You need one election cycle to pass it in the house and Senate than a long political slog to get it ratified.
Well it has something to do with election cycles cause Republicans will block this every way they can. So the only way for it to even have a shot is for Democrats to take both the House and Senate with a 2/3 majority to be able to make a constitutional amendments. I sincerely doubt that would happen. After that it would take a very long political slog to ratification. Which again, I don’t have high hopes for it to get through the States.
Election cycles are how people get elected, so it has a lot to do with election cycle leaning very heavily towards the Democrats for it to not be DOA. Then it has a long uphill battle to get it ratified by the states. To say that it has a slim chance of going anywhere is really overstating the chances of it happening.
Why wouldn’t this have bipartisan support other than the sobbingly obvious ways that it prevents consolidation of power?
That hasn’t happened since 1977 so don’t get your hopes up.
Term limits should be 6 years or less. 18 is just too much to allow for
18 years requires that the entire Court takes 3-6 administrations to swap out, and is the shortest term in which a single President can’t replace a majority of the justices.
With 6-year SCOTUS terms a 2-term President can select 100% of the justices on the Court, and would have a majority in their first term. It would completely remove the check against the Executive.
Yeah, at the proposed rate the court would be comprised of:
- 1 justice appointed by Bush Jr
- 4 justices appointed by Obama
- 2 justices appointed by Trump
- 2 justices appointed by Biden
So you’d have a 6-3 liberal leaning court. Which makes sense since Democrats have held the presidency for 12 of the last 18 years.
Sounds like a good plan!
18 years is too long, IMO. That’s 4.5 presidential terms. 10 makes more sense to me. But I’ll be happy if they can get anything done re: SCOTUS scum.
You want it to be long enough to retain some of the advantages of lifetime appointments. It wasn’t originally framed that way just for fun or convenience, it does have importance.
We also need to make sure they don’t need to go job hunting after their term limit is up, as that would incentivize corruption. They should retain their salary for life.
edit: Reading another comment in here, perhaps its important to note that the main advantage of the lifetime appointment is it allows Justices to be fearless. They can challenge the most powerful people in the entire country, because for their whole lifetime they need nothing more than their current job, which is guaranteed.
We don’t need “fearless” justices we need justices who respect neutrality and understand that no one is above the law, including them.
If you can think of a good way to guarantee that in a world where people can lie, I’m all ears.
After if they don’t retire they can go back to a circuit or something.
There’s no meaningful difference for “fearlessness” between a lifetime appointment and a set term. If they were up for a “reelection” of sorts, then that’d be something to worry about.
It’s about future prospects, assuming that once someone retires from a court position, they may want to do something else with their life asides fully retire. Only by ensuring the court appointment is permanent can you fully address that singular issue.
Note, I am not saying lifetime appointments are good or necessary, only that this is why they exist. It is not a pointless thing we should just thoughtlessly do away with, without taking these other things into account in some fashion. I think a lifetime salary would be a viable solution personally.
That number is way too high, it should be 8 years, the maximum amount even a president is allowed to serve.
I thought the intent was to keep the number at 9 while still having elections every 2 years. Doesn’t that come out to 18?
Exactly what I was going to say. Curse you and your family for saying it ahead of me. Also up vote.
Anyone know where 18 years came from? 3 appointments per Senate term? 9 Congressional terms for 9 justices? 4.5 presidential terms?
One would think you’d want it to be an even number of presidential terms, so every president gets one appointment per term or whatever. Otherwise you open yourself up to Garland-esque shenanigans by the Senate.
Because there are 9 justices, so there would be a new appointment every 2 years, giving every presidential term two appointments. So it will exactly avoid all that shit this way.
Historically, the average SC Justice has served about 16 years. 18 seems like a good length to eliminate the extreme cases without affecting the majority.
9 judges, one changed out every 2 years. Not one administration gets more than 4 nominations.
Why did he not push for this before the final months of his presidency? Why wait until the 11th hour?
I think you already know the answer, but are afraid to admit it to yourself.
Why doesn’t he add term limits for congress? And make stock trading illegal for congress? And ban lobbying? etc etc. This “anti-corruption” bill is really ignoring the elephant(s) in the room.
Small steps. This is good, fixes the larger problem we’re facing today. If we pass this, then we tackle the next. And then the next…
The proposals I listed are MUCH bigger issues.
and to the rest of us they are important. They are big issues that are harder to fix because it requires those in charge to do something not in their best interest. Strategy and time, we must do it the hard way unless you want to rise up your secret army of leftists that will quickly fix this shit.
An army of leftists wouldn’t fix anything
You: Why doesn’t the president do something!
President: does something
You: Why doesn’t the president do more!?!
Etc ad infinitum.
Prolly need congress to do this
I find it extremely ironic that a life long politician is calling for term limits. If perhaps it were term limits for both Congress and the Supreme Court I may support it. I hope this has no chance of moving forward.
I get the idealism, I really do, but if we waited for the absolute perfect version of everything, we would never get anything done. Besides, with a term limited scotus, you have a lot better position to argue for term limited politicians.
Interesting how Biden and the Dems are calling for this when the Supreme Court is majority Conservatives… I wonder if he’d feel the same if the SC was majority Liberal…
Clearly not, because if it were a liberal majority, it wouldn’t have declared Presidents above the law, or tried to outlaw abortion.
It’s not that they’re conservative, it’s that they’re making dumb fucking decisions.
If that case ever came to pass and a conservative majority did nothing, they would be as ethicaly compromised as the court is now and should be voted out of office. (Nice Whataboutism there eh… Pick a better argument)
If the court were majority liberal we wouldn’t be desperate for reform because the justices who were appointed by democrats aren’t corrupt.
He had 4 years, two of which we had the numbers…
It’s just a lot of Dems didn’t want to get rid of the fillibuster.
Having a D by your name isn’t enough, we need to elect Dems to those seats who are actually willing to fight.
Term limits on SCJ would take a constitutional amendment, so no we haven’t had the numbers.
We didn’t have the numbers. The Senate was 50 Republicans, 48 Democrats, 2 Independents. 2 of the Democrats (Manchin and Sinema) flipped to I.
So 50-46-4. And Manchin and Sinema refused to touch the filibuster.
He’d have to be a stronger leader to pull that off. But you’re right, it starts at the bottom. Elect progressives to local positions, and that becomes the foundation of the party. It’s precisely what conservatives have I been doing for 50 years.
Not saying there wouldn’t be more, but at least two Democrats are Republicans who ran under D and sabotaged several democratic agendas.
It would have been great to have the Democrats tow the party line and pass more meaningful legislation, but corrupt politicians gotta corrupt.
but at least two Democrats are Republicans who ran under D and sabotaged several democratic agendas.
So did Joe and the DNC fall for it?
Or were they lying when they said 50 was enough for the party platform?
Hell, four years ago Joe was saying he could get Republican senators to vote for the Dem platform
It would have been great to have the Democrats tow the party line and pass more meaningful legislation, but corrupt politicians gotta corrupt.
Dont tell me. Go tell the DNC who defends them, but hangs progressives out to dry and even supports their challengers.
