July 29, Washington, DC (Reuters) – President of the United States Joe Biden will put forth broad reforms to the Supreme Court on Monday, including term limits and a mandatory code of behavior for each of the court’s nine justices. However, because of the extreme polarization of Congress, these changes are unlikely to be enacted. Biden will make the recommendations at a speech at former president Lyndon B. Johnson’s presidential library in Austin, Texas, along with a constitutional amendment to remove extensive presidential immunity. Advertisement: Click to proceed “The fundamental idea upon which this country was built is that nobody is above the law. Not America’s president. Not one justice in the United States Supreme Court. Nobody ” In a Monday opinion piece that appeared in the Washington Post, Biden stated.
A week after abandoning his reelection campaign and endorsing Vice President Kamala Harris to face Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump in November, Biden is pushing for improvements. It also comes after the Supreme Court ruled that there is no constitutional right to an abortion, along with other rulings that thwarted Biden’s plans regarding student loans, immigration, vaccination requirements, and climate change. The life-tenured justices of the Supreme Court are not bound by any formal code of ethics, in contrast to other members of the federal court. Disclosure regulations compel them to record outside income and some gifts, although they are typically excused from reporting food and other “personal hospitality” like staying at someone’s home.
In the past, Biden had opposed attempts to reorganize or change the court’s nine judges who are appointed for life
Biden, meanwhile, would now pursue 18-year term limits for Supreme Court justices, with new justices being chosen every two years, according to the White House. According to an information sheet, this would “reduce the chance that any single presidency imposes undue influence for generations to come.” In addition, he would like to see a “binding, enforceable” code of ethics comparable to that which governs federal judges. With three judges selected during Trump’s presidency, the top court has a 6-3 conservative majority and has delivered many blows to Biden recently. The world was taken aback in 2022 when the court reversed the Roe v. Wade decision from 1973, which established the federal right to an abortion.
CurreBiden will urge Congress to enact legally mandated regulations requiring justices to reveal their gifts
According to the White House, he would also push Congress to impose an 18-year term restriction on Supreme Court judges. Term limits and an ethics code for the Supreme Court would need to be enacted into law, but given the current makeup of Congress, this is unlikely to happen. Biden will also suggest amending the constitution to explicitly state that holding office does not provide immunity from federal criminal prosecution, trial, conviction, or sentence. Adopting such an amendment would be far more challenging, needing a convention called by two-thirds of the states or two-thirds of the members of both chambers of Congress to support it and subsequently approved by 38 state legislatures out of 50.
In a momentous ruling that recognized presidential immunity from prosecution for the first time, the U.S. Supreme Court decided in July that Trump cannot be punished for acts that he took while serving as president under the Constitution. Subscribe to the On the Campaign Trail newsletter to receive weekly news and commentary on the US elections and their global significance. Register by going here.
years must serve on the Supreme Court for eighteen years in an active capacity
The Supreme Court’s mandatory code of conduct is the third modification that is being proposed. To comply with this, judges would have to reveal their gifts, abstain from political participation in public, and withdraw from cases in which they or their wives had a financial or other conflict of interest. Because of perceived ethical transgressions and political bias, Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, D-N.Y., filed articles of impeachment against Justices Clarence Thomas and Samuel Alito of the Supreme Court in July. Last year, Thomas sparked a scandal in ethics when it was discovered that he had concealed millions of dollars in gifts and other luxury travel from pals who were billionaires.
The Bronx Democrat declared, “It is expressly illegal for Justice Thomas and Judge Alito to have repeatedly, over decades, neglected to disclose that they received millions of dollars in gifts from people with business before the court.” When Biden speaks later in the day in Austin at the LBJ Presidential Library to commemorate the 60th anniversary of the Civil Rights Act, he is anticipated to discuss these plans.
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