In a Washington Post op-ed* (gift link), President Biden proposed three reforms related to the Supreme Court’s recent abhorent** behavior:
- An amendment overturning the recent decision preventing presidents from prosecution, even if they break the law, provided said lawbreaking was part of their official duties. One way to hammer this point home, including to the Court, would be to annul all student debt and then offer preemptive pardons for all government employees involved in this policy’s implementation. Just saying. And I hope Harris brings this up while campaigning.
- Supreme Court justices would only serve for eighteen years “in active service”, and one judge (the most senior) would rotate off the Court every two years.
- Supreme Court judges would “be required 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” in a way similar to other federal court judges.
These are all good things to do, but I would add one thing: in the legislation, Congress should strip the Court of jurisdiction. Even if the Court wouldn’t oppose these reforms, it’s important to throw the gauntlet down and remind them they are not an ultimate, unchecked political power.
But these are good things to propose, though they should have been done far earlier–if they had been proposed in 2021-2022, maybe some of the awful court decisions wouldn’t have happened. If nothing else, it would have made this much easier to run on in 2024.
Better late than never, I suppose (which is usually the behavior of professional Democrats).
*I hope he remains petty enough to not speak to the New York Times for the remainder of his term. This is the way.
**Also, weird. Lol…
mikethemadbiologist
Those are all good things to put in place during the reconstruction era to follow the next civil war. They will never be enacted any other way.
My only worry about Congress taking on the Courts’ jurisdictions under Article III is that the Republicans could (and I’m surprised they never tried it) change the Constitution by putting some topics, such as federal funding of religious organizations, off limits. The ability to decide that the Courts can’t decide an issue is itself inherently risky and could be as bad a coup by Congress (should the President be compliant to sign it) as big as what the Court did to the country this last session.