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.
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 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.
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.
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.
I prefer the term “unfuck”, but that is less PC
Unfortunately, it is impossible to be unfucked. Nobody can ever unfuck you.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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
