Stupid NY Times isn’t previewing well these days, but the link should work.
From the article:
President Biden said on Monday he was pushing for legislation that would bring major changes to the Supreme Court, including imposing term limits and creating an enforceable code of ethics on the justices.
In an opinion essay in The Washington Post, Mr. Biden also said that the court’s decision to grant broad immunity to presidents for crimes they commit in office was an example of “dangerous and extreme” decision-making that had put the American people at risk. He added that a number ethical concerns posed a threat to the integrity of the court.
“What is happening now is not normal, and it undermines the public’s confidence in the court’s decisions, including those impacting personal freedoms,” Mr. Biden wrote. “We now stand in a breach.”
Whether Biden is successful in bringing about the proposed changes remains to be seen. But at a minimum, he will use his time remaining in office to bring significant attention to what is, I think, a very dangerous situation with our current Supreme Court.
This SCOTUS is laser-intent on using its power to legislate from the bench in ways that a minority of our citizens want. It’s scary as hell. I’m glad President Biden will spend some of his remaining time calling for these changes.
In other news, the Supreme Court has ruled that Biden is a poopy-head and criticizing the Court is not an official act and nothing he proposed can be done.
I think Biden simply wants to put a spotlight on a serious threat to our democracy. Bringing it to more prominent attention is likely the best he can do.
I seriously doubt Biden will get anywhere with this but I am glad he is trying. I agree with you that this Supreme Court has gone waaaay off the rails and they need to have some restrictions placed on them.
But, as long as they are the darling of one party (which will always be the case) there is almost no chance for change.
Maybe the president with his new-found immunity granted by the supreme court can just give them the finger and do whatever he wants (which is also scary).
Sure, and if nothing else it raises the question of how those members of SCOTUS got into those positions in the first place, which of course is because Republicans put them in there. That’s highly relevant in the middle of the general election season.
The Hill gave a summary of the two amendments but, two keep it focused on the titular one, it was specifically:
While I can see some value to this, I think it misses the one biggest flaw that’s been introduced by populists over the last few years, which is the loss of the need for a supermajority’s assent to be able to emplace a new Justice.
It should be codified that this limit is in place and irrevocable, minus another amendment.
Minus it and you’re still going to be suffering whiplash. And given that we’d expect shifts of +4 and -4 fairly regularly, with a 2 year appointment schedule, that adjustment will be quite extreme if there’s barely no limit on the extremism and partisanship of the judges themselves.
Good, though I’d like to see an independent commission that’s established to police justices (across the board, not just the Supreme Court) and with special right to bring complaints to the House, to seek impeachments.
I think it’s a noble cause, but useless (because it will go nowhere) and not particularly helpful timing. IMHO, Biden shouldn’t be doing anything that takes the spotlight off of Harris. At this stage he should wait until after the election to do anything that makes the news.
I’d assume that they decided that it’s a loss leader - you’re not going to get it passed anytime in the next few years - so you’d rather it come from the lame duck than from the person who’s promising to be able to accomplish anything that Americans need.
As I said in another thread, it’s tricky when the candidate is the sitting VP under the President, because you don’t want the candidate’s activity to create any implication that they’re undermining the current boss. In this case, if Harris had come out with these proposals, the natural response would be, Okay but is Biden so weak he couldn’t have pushed for this himself?
I suspect on the policy front Biden and Harris are talking constantly and will move either in lockstep or in a close tag-team fashion in order to reinforce one another until the election.
Absolutely, which is why I think it should have sat on someone’s desk until after November 5. I just don’t see the upside in either Biden or Harris talking about this right now. If it has political value, then Harris should be doing it. If it doesn’t have political value, then Biden is taking attention away from Harris for nothing.
I put this in the category of “somebody had to say it”. Biden said it. Acknowledgment is always the first step in solving a difficult problem.
50 years ago the Supreme Court was a respected institution. It has since undergone several transformations, gradually becoming more and more partisan until today it’s egregiously biased, corrupt, and downright dangerous.
The odd thing is that some of the worst offenders aren’t even new. Samuel Alito has been on the bench since 2006, and Clarence Thomas goes all the way back to 1991, and they’re both nothing more than political hacks. Scalia is no longer with us but he wasn’t much better. It appears that the Trump appointees have acted as enablers for the worst of the bunch, who now wield the power of the majority.
I’m pessimistic about being able to do anything much beyond maybe an enforceable code of ethics, because the problem runs deeper than a corrupt and biased Court. The system for judicial appointments is basically sound. It presumes that a responsible and knowledgeable president will nominate a qualified candidate who will then be confirmed by the Senate, considered to be the senior deliberative body in Congress. The process completely falls apart when said president is an orange ignoramus and said Senate is comprised of worthies like Tommy Tuberville, Josh Hawley, and J D Vance. Sadly, that, and not the process itself, is the root of the problem.
I disagree emphatically. The Supreme Court has (as a unit) lost its mind and gone off the rails, and is now part of the right-wing threat to democracy. This must be acknowledged, in public, at the highest level, or it becomes normalized and it will be that much harder to deal with it later.
It’s a fundamental threat, and the way we are dealing with it is to have a lame-duck president take a half swing at it? I would rather see all the focus on Harris, and let her make it a real priority if she’s elected. I guess time will tell.
On the subject of fixed terms potentially resulting in a court that constantly changes it’s rulings, is there evidence of this from other countries that have fixed terms for their justices?
Naturally, Mike Johnson says Biden’s proposal is “dead on arrival” in the House, but more to the point, he mischaracterizes it as “Democrats want to change the system that has guided our nation since its founding simply because they disagree with some of the Court’s recent decisions”. No, you nitwit, it’s because the Court has been recklessly ignoring the time-honoured principle of stare decisis as well as basic logic in favour of blatantly partisan rulings over and over again, and in the process, depriving women of basic human rights while grifters like Clarence Thomas enrich themselves from payouts by neo-Nazi billionaires.
When an institution that is supposed to be a “court” no longer serves the interests of justice and some of its members are known corrupt grifters (Alito is another one), it really is time for a change.
It’s impossible to believe that the timing of this was not worked out with the Harris camp. She must see some advantage, either strategic or tactical.
Waiting until after the election would be bad for a number of reasons. If Trump wins, it’s sour grapes. If Harris wins, then why not wait until after the inauguration to make it her policy? Why introduce a controversial major change to the Constitution when the focus should be on her creating a new government?
Putting it out now allows the convention to make the Supreme Court a target while also giving a possible solution. People like solutions, far more than they do pledges.
The larger question is why these three changes? The first two call for Constitutional Amendments so are going nowhere. Passing ethics law on the Supreme Court is possible; enforcing them would be a political nightmare.
My hunch is that doing so reminds people that Biden still is the President for six more months: here’s big stuff that I can safely propose now (and keep Trump out of the headlines for another week). Also that releasing a set of alterations might swing opinions - public and Congressional - sufficiently to force the Supremes to make their own binding ethics code.
Mostly, though, I’m not seeing the value. All potential loss, no realistic gain. Hope I’m wrong.