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.
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.
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?
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.
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.
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.
As a non-American, what does it mean to “nuke the filibuster”?
The US Senate only has 100 members (2 per state), and since the body is so small they pride themselves on not limiting debates there. But at some point they do need to decide to progress to a vote, and to do that someone makes a “cloture” motion to close debate on that issue and proceed to a vote. In the US Senate, a cloture motion needs 60 votes to pass.
What this means is that if a minority wants to kill a bill, all they need to do is maintain 41 votes against ending debate. It can never proceed to a vote, then, even if more than 50 Senators are in favor. This is what we call a fillibuster: when enough Senators prevent a measure from being voted on.
This filibuster is just a Senate rule, though, and can be removed by a simple majority vote of the Senate. In the current Democratic majority, though, there were just enough Senators who didn’t want to nuke the rule to keep it in place. They are leaving, though, so if Democrats retain the Senate they will probably have the votes to change the rule.
The drawback is that someday, Republicans will take back the Senate, and if there is no filibuster Democrats in the Minority will have lost a key tool to gum up a Republican majority. But the SC is more important than all that. We need to reform the court ASAP, no matter the political cost.
Democrats in the Minority will have lost a key tool to gum up a Republican majority
Quick, name the last time Democrats with a Senate minority actually used the filibuster to block the Republican agenda. Whereas Republicans only have to threaten to filibuster (and not actually stand there talking for days on end) to block the Democratic agenda.
I mean, it didn’t succeed, but they tried: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Neil_Gorsuch_Supreme_Court_nomination#Filibuster
They tried when they didn’t have control of the Senate, but didn’t end the filibuster when they did have control… weird.
I have absolutely no experience or stakes in this, but from my outside perspective, I doubt a Republican majority would keep the filibuster themselves once it’s an advantage to the Democrats. That trust to not abuse it and have it not be abused against you has been completely eroded in the past years.
eroded
That’s putting it mildly. I’d say “obliterated”.
Remove it as an an option.
Right now, any one senator can stop a vote on any bill by announcing they filibuster it.
That used to (decades ago) require them to stand and talk as long as they were able, to delay voting on the bill.
Now without the “talking filibuster” requirement, it becomes trivially easy for any senator to stop anything they don’t like.A filibuster can be broken, and a vote can be forced to happen, if 60 of the 100 senators agree to it.
That almost never happens, as no one party ever gets a 60 seat “super-majority”.Removing the filibuster will allow most any bill to pass with a standard 51% majority.
Stopping the minority party from blocking everything they don’t like.The rules of the Senate itself can be changed with with a simple 51% majority, since they aren’t Laws that govern the land.
So it is possible to eliminate the filibuster without requiring a filibuster breaking super-majority.Ok. I understand now. Thank you for the explanation.
One of the ways to stall a bill is to talk about it forever. Here’s the wiki explaining it.
Technically speaking the filibuster is only acceptable because the rules of congress allow them, but the rules are changed and Agreed on by all members every year. So “nuke the filibuster” would mean to disallow it in the procedural rules of congress.
There is an old army manual that says if you are ever forced to work for the enemy, try to push as many things as possible into committee decisions, because it looks like its helping, but also slows everything down to a crawl/halt.
Exactly. Biden is still playing by the old rulebook.
Spot-on analysis!
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.🇺🇸
US has sent Israel thousands of 2,000-pound bombs since Oct. 7
Not really complicated. That’s why Irish MEP Clare Daly called him “Butcher Biden” and said he dishonors the legacy of his ancestors. It seems many Irish-Americans agree.
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.
Biden was critical in making it that core part. Not just during his presidency.
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.
I’m for the changes, but I’m skeptical about whether anything can be accomplished. If the SC changes aren’t done as an amendment, they’ll be subject to SC review. Getting anything past either of those bars seems nigh impossible.
Similarly, if the SC rules that presidential immunity is implied in the constitution, they could also block that without an amendment.
Maybe the plan isn’t to succeed but just to establish a record that Republican lawmakers are good with a supreme executive and corrupt courts, but I sort of feel like they’ve all but said that aloud anyway.
ETA:
But while we’re on the subject of changing things, I wonder about after an 18 year term is up, if there would be any use for a sort of Justice Emeritus who doesn’t get a vote, but can write concurring/dissenting opinions and maybe serve in either an advisory or ethics review capacity. So keep the lifetime appointment with all the advantages of that, but allow for the actual sitting court to change more over time. I don’t know; I haven’t really fleshed out the idea because it’s a pipe dream at this point.
Getting them on record could aid in impeachment. That would require congressional majority, but would also get Congress on record.
This may be more about exposure and transparency than success.
That’s my take.
Barring some kind of miracle it’s just a public demonstration of the corruption.
if he really wants to hit republicans in every race, then run on the fact that republicans are talking out of both sides of their mouths when they claim presidents above 80 are too old to run but they seem ok with supreme court justices to essentially live their entire lives on the court.
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.
That’s assuming it isn’t gamed. If your time is running out and your party is losing power soon, you can step down and let the president of your choice appoint a new justice.
I imagine they’d have to flush out all the exact scenarios, the biggest problem being the existing justices. I’d imagine you’d have to do something like this, assuming the bill took place immediately.
- Thomas - Joined the court in 1991, almost 33 years ago - Out immediately, serving 15 years longer than normal, Biden chooses replacement.
- Roberts - Joined the court in 2005, almost 19 years ago - Out in 2026, serving 21 years, 3 longer than normal, Harris chooses replacement.
- Alito - Joined the court in 2006, almost 18 years ago - Out in 2028, serving 22 years, 4 longer than normal, Harris chooses replacement.
- Sotomayor - Joined the court in 2009, almost 15 years ago - Out in 2030, serving 21 years, 3 longer than normal, Harris chooses replacement.
- Kagan - Joined the court in 2010, almost 14 years ago - Out in 2032, serving 22 years, 4 longer than normal, Harris chooses replacement.
- Gorsuch - Joined the court in 2017, over 7 years ago - Out in 2034, serving 17 years, 1 year shorter than normal, next president chooses replacement.
- Kavanaugh - Joined the court in 2018, almost 6 years ago - Out in 2036, serving 18 years, which is the new normal, next president chooses replacement.
- Barrett - Joined the court in 2020, almost 4 years ago - Out in 2038, serving 18 years, which is the normal, next president chooses replacement.
- Jackson - Joined the court in 2022, over 2 years ago - Out in 2040, serving 18 years, which is the new normal, next president chooses replacement.
Honestly, looking at it written out it seems really good. Obviously the older court members are the ones that will have stuck around longer than the 18 years. Under the schedule, Gorsuch is the only one who doesn’t get the full 18 years, which is fitting since he is the only pick for the court that is truly illegitimate.
I think if there was a death or someone had to step down, you’d want the current president to appoint someone to fill the remainder of their term, rather than starting the clock all over again at 18 years. That would prevent retiring early to game the system.
Yeah - you’d basically set up an 18-year cycle of appointments every 2 years with each seat up once per cycle.
I’d be okay with locking-in the number of seats on the Court at that point as well. Adding or removing seats would really screw with the system, and 9 seats with 18 year terms really does work out brilliantly mathematically.
Only once since the Civil War has a President been elected to replace a President of the same party (Reagan - > HW Bush), so keeping a 2-term President from being able to appoint a majority would probably result in a fairly balanced Court.
Also limiting them to 1 term offers the same political immunity a lifetime appointment does.
The more I think about it the more I like it.
If a Senator, Congresspe son, or President leaves office early, the person appointed or elected to fill the vacancy finishes out the term. The Supreme Court would be similar.
Maybe have a rule similar to the President that if a Justice serves less than X years of a predecessor’s term they can be reappoonted, so that if someone dies or steps down a year before their term is up it doesn’t screw the person who fills the vacancy.
I agree, but I also think 18 seems a little long. I think 14 would probably be a good number, or maybe 16. I think having it off the 4-year cycle is a solid idea. I assume 18 was chosen because that’s two two-term presidents plus an extra 2 years to space it out to make it harder to game. I can see some of the reasons 18 was picked and I get it, but also 18 is the amount of time it takes to get the right to vote, which seems long for an unelected position to be held without the ability to give feedback.
Do you want an individual President to be able to select more than 50% of the Court?
If the answer is “no” then 18 years is going to need to be the minimum.
A 2-term President would get to nominate 4 justices with an 18-year term.
With 16-year terms, a 2-term President has a 50/50 shot of getting to nominate 5, depending on where in the SCOTUS cycle the President is elected.
16 is also problematic due to the number of seats on the Court. It’s best to have it be 1, 3, 9, or 18 to keep the cycle regular, and everything but 18 is way too short.
18 really does work out very well.
For SCOTUS I think the idea is to have an opening every 2 years. I can see the argument in favor of replacing them at about that rate. But maybe 1 per year is better. Regardless, I’d like to see the SCOTUS openings be more predictable and frequent.
18 years is perfect. It’s the shortest term in which a single Predisent can’t replace a majority of the justices.
Yeah that occurred to me after I posted my comment. Seems perfect to me, too.
9 years means a 2 term president gets 8 people on the court. That’s a terrifying prospect.
Yep agreed
I think it makes sense if you want stability where there’s always 4 senior judges with 10+ years experience.
And even better if we combine this with strict ethics rules where we can be sure any new Tomas etc. gets the boot.
Sounds like a good plan!
Hmm. Why not set also set a retirement age? Are there any rules for what happens if a judge gets early onset Alzheimer’s or something?
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.
Yeah, so the lifetime appointment thing is true right now and it turns out enables corruption. Perhaps the original justifications behind lifetime appointments were just, in fact, bad?
More that something like corruption is impossible to completely prevent. So you just try to make it harder by reducing incentives. We can’t get to “perfect” in a world with humans in it, but “better” is a realistically attainable achievement.
Okay, but it’s not being prevented at all. The current system incentivizes corruption because, clearly, it is practically impossible to do anything about justices who have succumbed to that corruption. So within the context of an environment where billionaires can dump limitless money on a justice and the constituents of that justice can do nothing at all to recall them or even really reprimand them in any way, how is that not asking for corruption to happen?
Biden’s proposals also includes an enforceable code of ethics to address corruption on the bench. And as Carrolade mentions, Congress can impeach and remove judges.
Biden’s proposals also includes an enforceable code of ethics to address corruption on the bench.
From the article:
The president also called for stricter, enforceable rules on conduct which would require justices to disclose gifts, refrain from political activity, and recuse themselves from cases in which they or their spouses have financial interest.
If they aren’t being removed and imprisoned for the kind of activity we see from, say, justice Thomas then the code of ethics isn’t strict enough.
and as Carrolade mentions, Congress can impeach and remove judges.
How many times has that happened in history? If the standard is set such that enforcement is practically impossible to reach, then the rules supposedly being enforced practically don’t exist.
Well said. There’s a strong tendency for people to revere tradition and the constitution a little too much. They forget that our democracy is old (as far as modern democracies go). The constitution was set up by a bunch of wealthy landowners (and some of them were slaveholders). It’s a collection of pretty bad compromises that had to be amended 27 times…and now is practically impossible to amend.
Supreme Court Justice is a very important and respectable position, but there’s nine of them (for now) because one person can’t be trusted with too much power. I think it should be limited even further. We give them too much veneration and power under the current system. Treating these people as infallible demigods is what got us into this mess to begin with.
There actually is a method provided for justice removal, it just takes Congress, which also features corruption unfortunately. Also, just because there is some corruption evident does not mean it is not being prevented at all. Are all 9 corrupt? That would eventually happen if it was not prevented at all.
Importantly though, short term limits would also not prevent corruption, and would probably increase it, as Justices would become much more interested in joining businesses and lobbying organizations after their tenures are up. Hence, a middle ground is probably smarter.
I think the justification is very good, but the actual implementation came with unforeseen consequences. Making the terms much shorter would make the court more like a second legislature, which defeats much of the original purpose. Having18-year terms is a good compromise.
I’d also like to have spelled-out ethics requirements and a lower bar for impeachment, but OTOH I don’t think either of those things would have prevented the current mess, because the rely on the Senate to act in good faith, and we know Republicans will never vote to impeach one of their own judges not matter how corrupt they may be.
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.
18?! Try 8.
You won’t even get 50
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.
Do it Pussy
That’s not how government works. Biden has the power to start a discussion, but it’s up to Congress to actually do it.
Alito and Thomas Palpatine entered the chat, with money falling out of their Sith robes:
“We ARE the Supreme Court.”
