President Biden is finalizing plans to endorse major changes to the Supreme Court in the coming weeks, including proposals for legislation to establish term limits for the justices and an enforceable ethics code, according to two people briefed on the plans.
He is also weighing whether to call for a constitutional amendment to eliminate broad immunity for presidents and other constitutional officeholders, the people said, speaking on the condition of anonymity to discuss private deliberations.
The announcement would mark a major shift for Biden, a former chair of the Senate Judiciary Committee, who has long resisted calls to reform the high court. The potential changes come in response to growing outrage among his supporters about recent ethics scandals surrounding Justice Clarence Thomas and decisions by the new court majority that have changed legal precedent on issues including abortion and federal regulatory powers.
Do republicans ever pass any legislation supported by democrats anymore? What’s the last bill that was passed?
Genocide still enjoys broad bipartisan support.
I think CHIPS
How is he going to get anything through the Republican house or even the Senate without a Democratic super majority?
Proposing the changes could excite the voters enough to give him control of both chambers. Even announcing it might shift the needle for some fence sitters.
That’s exactly what we need right now. There are almost no undecided voters left, just unmotivated voters. We need something to energize voters who have been feeling ignored by the DNC, at best.
Seriously. His passive approach to the upcoming election has thusfar been infuriating. It’s like he’s assumed that not being Trump will be enough to win it for him, while his support dwindles. We need something to get people excited about voting for him, and wide-sweeping governmental reforms could be just that, at least among folks who’re paying attention. The “Well, both sides are corrupt, so what does it matter?” crowd.
As a non american I also don’t understand. So much good they did. And the R’s have so much bad stuff to their name… it should be hammer time… drive these points home.
The thing you’re missing is that left-leaning Americans have a hard time believing lip service like this because we’ve seen the Democrats fail to deliver on big promises over and over and over. Or they’ll do some crappy watered-down version of what they promised and use that as an excuse not to do anything else on the issue for decades (health care is in this category, minor changes in the right direction in 2010, and it wasn’t even until 2020 that the Democrats would admit maybe everything wasn’t solved yet).
I’m gonna vote for Biden despite the fact that I do not believe he should be president, but I fully don’t believe a word of this. The Democrats have played this type of card right before every election, and it always ends in disappointment.
How many times have the DNC lead people to the polls with big promises, then half way, if at all, deliver? Ive been able to vote since Reagan and its been the same thing every election. This is stuff he should have tried to tackle his first or second year. We are 15 seconds to the end of the fourth quarter and hes trying to throw a Hail Mary in the wrong direction
The downvotes on you are infuriating. That’s just people sticking their heads in the sand. Democrats always whip out the carrot right before an election. Then let it rot afterwards.
Still waiting on that student loan debt memo, Biden. I’d really like to know why you couldn’t even try to do anything on your 2020 promise until right before the 2022 midterms.
It’d be nice if he’d announce dealing with Citizens United at the same time.
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It would involve winning the Presidency and both houses of Congress in the next election, and then nuking the Filibuster.
So it’s a completely empty promise.
Democrats will never nuke the filibuster. Ever. It’s what lets them pretend their hands are tied when they kill progressive legislation they ran on but never had any intention of ever implementing.
They would rather lose Democracy forever than abandon the relic of Jim Crow they use for its intended purpose.
The thing he already chose not to do. If it cant be done by Biden unilaterally at this point, it cant be done by him at all.
Manchin and Sinema voted against abolishing the filibuster; Biden was in favor of removing he, he just didn’t have the votes.
And what were the calls to primary the people that would not vote in favor of it in the midterms? That’s how people hold their politicians accountable. But VBNMW people never hold their politicians accountable that’s why the politicians keep getting worse because they don’t have to work in favor of their votes, because they’re going to get them regardless of what they do, no matter how shitty the policy no matter how shitty the rhetoric, the loyalists will stay in line.
Theyve had a shit ton of opportunities to kill the filibuster, but dont want to lose that rotating villain.
And this is why you should work to enshrine a good thing when it’s still good. Because if you don’t and it gets corrupted, you’re too late.
Resisting stuff like term limits and ethics codes makes no sense.
He is also weighing whether to call for a constitutional amendment to eliminate broad immunity for presidents
“On the one hand, a president shouldn’t be allowed to order Seal Team 6 to kill someone. On the other hand, my neighbor’s dog keeps shitting in my yard.”
How is this a question?
You need 75% of the states to ratify an amendment. Even if Biden wins the election, you think the GOP ruled state legislatures will voluntarily restrict the powers of the next GOP president? The most threatening part of Project 2025 is that it only requires the next Republican President. They’ll bet on Biden not using those powers the Supreme Court invented so that the next Republican President will.
And they’ll win that bet. No Democrat has the guts to use those powers to fight fascism.
Introduce it, win the presidency, and then force Republicans to ratify it or deal with the threat of a wildly irresponsible President.
They’ll bet on Biden not using those powers the Supreme Court invented
This is what i’m talking about. Let’s go, Joe.
When people bitch and moan about leftists not falling in line behind presidents, it’s because we want shit like this to happen. If Biden was polling favorably and had no detractors, I doubt we would see him attempting to tackle something like this.
This is good news though, and marks the first steps on a long journey to establishing a legitimate Supreme Court once more.
This, 100%. And to pile on, any effort that doesn’t include expanding the size of the Supreme Court to 13 is too little, too late.
It’s like the DNC holding abortion rights over everyone’s heads instead of actually doing something about it for decades.
I float this from time to time: eliminate the fixed size. Open a new vacancy on the court every other year, first and third years of the presidential term. When a justice dies or retires, we remove their seat; it does not create a new vacancy. We just keep adding life-term justices on a slow, fixed schedule. I would expect the court would eventually vary in size from about 17 to 20 justices.
We would need emergency procedures to reconstitute a court if it ever falls below 7; I’d establish a line of succession from the most senior chief judge of the circuit courts, down to the most junior.
I’d also provide a limited means for a president to bypass a hostile, politically-motivated Senate. The chief judges of the circuit courts were previously confirmed by the Senate and are already in the SCOTUS line of succession established above. They are pre-confirmed. They can be elevated to a regular vacancy without additional confirmation. This gives a pool of 13 veto-proof candidates for the president to choose from if the Senate decides to play games.
First I’ve heard of something like this but I like it. Did you come up with this idea on your own or is there a name or resource I can read more about it under?
I highly doubt I’m the first person to think of removing the fixed size of the court, but I haven’t seen a similar approach before or since.
My inspiration was the rampant politicization over Scalia’s seat at the beginning of the 2016 election year, and RBG’s untimely death shortly before the 2020 election. These vacancies from unexpected deaths should not have had the outsized political effects that they did.
I also wanted to target the longstanding practice of strategic resignation. I think it is a form of collusion, conspiracy, and a violation of the separation of powers, with no practical means of prohibition or avoidance. You can’t simply tell a justice they can’t quit the court, even when doing so is obviously motivated by political expediency.
With this approach, a popular president with a strong mandate will have a long-term influence on the court. They will be able to name a fairly young jurist, who will serve and influence for decades. A divisive president who doesn’t have the support of the Senate will only be able to appoint from the most senior candidates on the circuit courts, who aren’t likely to last more than a few years. The more popular the president, the greater their long-term influence on the court.
Bringing back a 2 week old comment but man were you scarily close to what Biden is proposing!
Red Meat
…for the rabid dogs
Three and a half years later.
Edit: genuinely curious why the downvotes? The left has been calling for the since day one, back when Democrats controlled both houses of Congress. But he’s making it an issue now, when he doesn’t have control of the House, just in time for Trump to possibly win and actually pull it out?
Biden LITERALLY CAN DO ANYTHING HE WANTS as long as it’s a Presidential Act! I’m GLAD the Democratic Nominee is SUCH a Fearless Leader!
