Yesterday, I was bopping around the internet while watching the Women’s Gymnastics qualification rounds and I saw some chatter about Biden releasing a Supreme Court proposal sometime soon. Obviously, this is a great idea because Donald Trump’s Supreme Court has rolled the country back to the 1950s and hopes to take us back even further. If they get their way, I will be picking cotton on somebody’s plantation before Beyonce finishes her trilogy. If Biden is going to overhaul the Supreme Court, my immediate two thoughts were “term limits” and “expand the court.” Both of these will ensure we are not stuck with three justices picked by a reality television host for the next two generations. With those picks, Trump placed more justices on the court than any single-term president since Hoover (and more justices than anyone since Reagan placed four of them back in the 80s over the course of his two Alzheimic terms in office). The only way to get us out from under the weight of idiocy and blatant bi-partisanship is to build a path toward neutering the power of any individual vote (by adding more judges) and to place some guardrails to get them off the court (by putting in term limits). The fact that that DEI Hire Amy Coney Barrett is sitting with a job for the rest of her life unsettles my spirit!
Well nobody ever listens to me so we’re not expanding the court, which would be the most immediate fix to this mess. However, of Biden’s three proposals, one of them does impose term limits.
No Immunity for Crimes a Former President Committed in Office: President Biden shares the Founders’ belief that the President’s power is limited—not absolute—and must ultimately reside with the people. He is calling for a constitutional amendment that makes clear no President is above the law or immune from prosecution for crimes committed while in office. This No One Is Above the Law Amendment 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.
Term Limits for Supreme Court Justices: Congress approved term limits for the Presidency over 75 years ago, and President Biden believes they should do the same for the Supreme Court. The United States is the only major constitutional democracy that gives lifetime seats to its high court Justices. 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. President Biden supports a system in which the President would appoint a Justice every two years to spend eighteen years in active service on the Supreme Court.
Binding Code of Conduct for the Supreme Court: President Biden believes that Congress should pass binding, enforceable conduct and ethics rules that require 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. Supreme Court Justices should not be exempt from the enforceable code of conduct that applies to every other federal judge.
Of the three, I honestly feel like the first point about immunity for the President will be the hardest for the Right to swallow, because they have a President who they know has committed crimes and they don’t want to see him in jail. Term limits shouldn’t cause as much dust because they do not plan to lose any elections going forward (and they want to eliminate voting altogether), so if there’s always a Republican in the White House, there will always be a Republian appointee to the Court. The third one is a gray area, because the whole point is to plant politically partisan judges, but the only way to create that judge is to give them kickbacks and pick people who are involved in the politics they want to have represented on the Court. But, I’ve watched enough Scandal to know that you can hide anything if the paper trail is confusing enough, so we’ll see if we get a lot of arguing over that.
For me, eighteen years still feels like an extremely long time, especially since the current judges will likely be grandfathered into the lifetime appointment category anyway. If we look at their ages today and put an arbitrary life expectancy of 85-years-old, this is what we’re dealing with going forward.
The Supreme Court won’t balance itself out until after the 2032 election! Kamala has to run defense for two terms, since Alito and Thomas surely won’t step down with a Democrat in office, and then we’re just holding on to the hope that they will ascend to The Upper Room sometime during the 2032 cycle with another Democrat in office. It’s not looking great for us, babes!
Supreme Court reform is sorely needed, but it doesn’t feel like Joe Biden went far enough with his opening salvo. Everything is a negotiation, and if we’re already starting from the bare minimum, where is there to go from here? What we need is ten year term limits and an expansion of the Supreme Court to double its size. What we’re asking for is eighteen year term limits and “promise me you’re not political and aren’t taking gifts from bad people.” So much for an overhaul.
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