President Joe Biden on Monday called for reforming the Supreme Court and amending the Constitution to limit his powers, signals a priority for his final months as president, even if those reforms may never be enacted.
Speaking at the Lyndon B. Johnson Presidential Library in Austin, Texas, Biden said the reforms would target presidential immunity, term limits for Supreme Court justices and the court’s mandatory ethics rules, focusing on financial disclosure and conflicts of interest.
“These reforms are necessary to restore confidence in our courts and preserve the system of checks and balances essential to our democracy,” Biden said.
a He said the constitutional amendment should provide that former presidents will not be immune from federal criminal prosecution, trial, conviction or sentencing.
“This country was founded on the principle that in America there are no kings, that we are all equal under the law,” Biden said. “Imagine what a president with this kind of immunity could do, trampling on civil rights and freedoms. The courts are used to weaponize an extreme and unchecked agenda.”
The changes are consistent with Biden’s recent statement that “no president is above the law,” a statement he has repeated many times since the Supreme Court ruled that some conduct related to the office of the president cannot be prosecuted. The decision favored former President Donald Trump in his criminal case and could allow other former presidents to avoid certain criminal prosecutions in the future.
Biden also voiced his support for Congress. He has introduced legislation to impose term limits on Supreme Court justices, saying he supports 18-year terms, which he believes will prevent one president from influencing the judiciary for generations.
“Term limits would help ensure that the Supreme Court’s membership is regularly replaced,” Biden said. “This would make the timing of Supreme Court nominations more predictable and less arbitrary, reducing the chance that a single president could have an undue influence on future generations.”
In addition to term limits, Biden has called on Congress to subject the Supreme Court to enforceable ethics rules like those imposed on other federal judges regarding gifts, political activities and financial transactions.
“The Supreme Court’s current ethics rules are weak, and what’s even more frightening is that they are voluntary,” Biden said.
The President Biden announced his proposal during a ceremony marking the 60th anniversary of the Civil Rights Act signed by President Lyndon Johnson in 1964. The ceremony was rescheduled following the near-assassination of Trump at a campaign rally in Pennsylvania on July 13. Biden had planned to announce his plan on Monday, July 15, but remained in the White House during his administration’s initial investigation into the shooting.
Biden first issued his call for reform in an op-ed published in The Washington Post on Monday, writing, “What is happening now is not normal and undermines public confidence in the Supreme Court’s decisions, including those that affect individual liberties. We are now in a crisis.”
“I share our Founding Fathers’ belief that the power of the President is limited, not absolute,” the president wrote. “We are a nation of laws, not of kings or dictators.”
“I’m going to seek reform of the Supreme Court because it’s critical to our democracy,” Biden said in an Oval Office speech last week explaining why he chose to end his reelection campaign and how he plans to spend his remaining months in office.
NBC News reported this month that Biden plans to support a series of reforms to the Supreme Court and has shared his ideas with lawmakers.
Early in his political career, Biden was reluctant to support major reforms to the Supreme Court. His public stance changed following recent disputes between Justices Clarence Thomas and Samuel Alito and the conservative majority’s decisions on issues such as abortion rights. Biden has been a fierce critic of those decisions. He told a crowd at a fundraiser last month that the Supreme Court “has never been more off balance than it is today.”
He repeated those concerns on Monday, saying, “The courts are not self-policing. The courts are not addressing obvious conflicts of interest.”
Justice Elena Kagan became the first Supreme Court justice to call for a stricter ethics code in remarks at the annual judicial conference in California on Thursday. She signed the Supreme Court’s new ethics code last year, but in her remarks last week said the code needed an enforcement mechanism.
“I think that kind of system makes sense both in terms of enforcing the rules against people who break the rules and in terms of protecting people who don’t break the rules,” Kagan said.
“I look forward to working with Congress to implement these necessary documents,” Biden said Monday.
Even if the president were to push for reform, it’s unlikely any such legislation would pass Congress. Biden spoke with House Democrats before dropping out of the presidential race, saying he needed their help to pass the reform. And given the Republican majority in the House and the narrow Democratic majority in the Senate, he likely would need to convince some Republicans to back down.
Senate Democrats introduced a bill to reform the Supreme Court last year, but Republican opposition blocked the effort last month.
