US President Joe Biden has unveiled proposals to reform the Supreme Court, calling on Congress to impose term limits on justices and impose new ethics rules.
Biden outlined his plans for the conservative-led Supreme Court in an opinion piece on Monday, saying they are needed to “restore trust and accountability to the court and our democracy”.
The reforms, which would need to be passed by Congress, include setting Supreme Court justices’ terms at 18 years and establishing a stricter ethics code for them, similar to that governing federal judges.
Biden is also urging for a constitutional amendment that would undermine the Supreme Court’s recent ruling backing Donald Trump’s claims to presidential immunity.
“This nation was founded on a simple yet profound principle: No one is above the law,” Biden wrote in The Washington Post.
“Not the president of the United States. Not a justice on the Supreme Court of the United States. No one,” said Biden, who previously had been wary of calls to reform the court.
He added: “We can and must prevent the abuse of presidential power. We can and must restore the public’s faith in the Supreme Court. We can and must strengthen the guardrails of democracy.”
Election issue
The proposals are an unlikely bid by the 81-year-old president, who will not run for re-election, to leave his mark on the US’s judicial system in his last days in office.
With both chambers of Congress deeply divided, and Biden’s rival Republican Party narrowly controlling the House of Representatives, his chances of getting the reforms through are next to none, analysts say.
Nevertheless, the reform push could help put the Supreme Court on voters’ minds as they head to the ballot box in November, said Democratic Senator Elizabeth Warren.
“That is a good reason to vote for Kamala Harris and to vote for Democrats in both the Senate and the House,” Warren told CNN earlier this week after Biden initially spoke about the plans.
The White House said that both Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris, now the presumptive Democratic nominee in the upcoming election, “look forward to working with Congress” to move the reforms forward.
Biden will further unveil the reform details in a speech in Austin, Texas later on Monday.
Reporting from Washington, DC, on Monday morning, Al Jazeera’s Alan Fisher said Biden’s announcement is about “energising the Democratic base” not just for November’s presidential race, but also for Senate and House of Representatives contests.
That, he explained, would give the Democratic Party “the numbers to be able to push [these reforms] through both the House and the Senate” if there is a Democratic president in the White House in 2025.
Conservative bastion
The Supreme Court has a 6-3 conservative majority, including three judges who were appointed by former President Trump.
The court has since delivered several severe blows to Biden and the Democratic Party, including on reproductive rights.
The court stunned Americans in 2022 when it overturned the 1973 Roe v Wade ruling that had underpinned the federal right to abortion. The ruling paved the way for at least 20 states to bring in full or partial abortion bans.
This year, the court significantly rolled back the power of federal agencies, while also partially ruling in early July in favour of Trump’s immunity claims.
Trump, who is the Republican Party’s 2024 presidential nominee, is now using that ruling to challenge his recent criminal conviction in an adult film actress-hush money case as well as a series of other prosecutions.
Trump has decried court reform as a partisan effort by Democrats to go after their opponents and tamper with the elections.
“The Democrats are attempting to interfere in the Presidential Election, and destroy our Justice System, by attacking their Political Opponent, ME, and our Honorable Supreme Court,” Trump posted on his Truth Social site earlier this month.
“We have to fight for our Fair and Independent Courts, and protect our Country.”
In addition to issuing contentious rulings, the Supreme Court has been rocked by ethics scandals involving conservative justices.
Justice Clarence Thomas recently admitted that two luxury vacations he took in 2019 were paid for by a billionaire Republican political donor.
Thomas, the longest-service justice on the court, has also ignored calls to recuse himself from cases related to the 2020 election, after his wife took part in the drive to keep Trump in power despite his electoral loss.
And Justice Samuel Alito has rejected calls to recuse himself from some Trump-related cases after flags linked to the former president’s false election fraud claims were discovered to have been flown outside his home and vacation property.
