President Joe Biden on Monday called for an overhaul of the Supreme Court and a constitutional amendment limiting the power of his own office — reforms that might not be implemented but demonstrate his priorities in his final months in office.
In remarks at the Lyndon B. Johnson Presidential Library in Austin, Texas, Biden said the reforms would target presidential immunity, term limits for Supreme Court justices and mandatory ethics rules for the court that focus on financial disclosures and conflicts of interest.
“We need these reforms to restore trust in the courts, preserve the system of checks and balances that are vital to our democracy,” Biden said.
A constitutional amendment, he said, should stipulate that former presidents don’t have any immunity from federal criminal indictments, trials, convictions or sentencing.
“This nation was founded on the principle there are no kings in America, each of us is equal before the law,” Biden said. “Just imagine what a president could do, trampling civil rights and liberties, given such immunity. The court is being used to weaponize an extreme and unchecked agenda.”
Such an amendment is in line with Biden’s recent statements that “no president is above the law,” a refrain he has repeated several times since the Supreme Court said some actions related to the duties of a president can’t be prosecuted. The decision favors former President Donald Trump in criminal cases against him and could enable other former presidents to avoid certain criminal charges going forward.
Biden also expressed support for Congress to create term limits for Supreme Court justices, saying he favors 18-year terms, which he believes would prevent one president from having multigenerational influence on the judiciary.
“Term limits would help ensure that the court membership changes with some regularity," Biden said. "That would make timing for the court's nomination more predictable and less arbitrary, and reduce the chance that any single presidency imposes undue influence on generations to come."
In addition to term limits, Biden called on Congress to make the Supreme Court subject to the kind of enforceable ethics requirements imposed on other federal judges regarding gifts, political activities and financial dealings.
“The Supreme Court’s current ethics code is weak, and even more frightening — voluntary," Biden said.
The president laid out his proposals at a celebration of the 60th anniversary of the Civil Rights Act, signed by President Lyndon Johnson in 1964. The event was rescheduled after the assassination attempt on Trump at a campaign rally in Pennsylvania on July 13. Biden had been expected to present his plans the following Monday, July 15, but instead stayed at the White House during his administration’s initial investigation into the shooting.
Biden first laid out his call for reforms Monday in an op-ed published by The Washington Post, writing, “What is happening now is not normal, and it undermines the public’s confidence in the court’s decisions, including those impacting personal freedoms. We now stand in a breach.”
“I share our founders’ belief that the president’s power is limited, not absolute,” the president wrote. “We are a nation of laws — not of kings or dictators.”
In his address from the Oval Office last week explaining why he chose to end his re-election campaign and how he planned to spend his final months in office, Biden said he was "going to call for Supreme Court reform because this is critical to our democracy."
NBC News reported this month that Biden planned to endorse a series of reforms to the court and had notified members of Congress about his thinking.
Biden was reluctant to back significant changes to the Supreme Court earlier in his political career. The shift in his public posture follows recent controversies involving Justices Clarence Thomas and Samuel Alito, and decisions by the conservative majority on issues like abortion rights — rulings Biden has heavily criticized. Biden told a crowd at a fundraiser last month that the Supreme Court “has never been as out of kilter as it is today.”
He reiterated those concerns on Monday, saying, “The court is not self-policing. The court is not dealing with the obvious conflicts of interest.”
Just last week, Justice Elena Kagan became the first member of the court to call for a stronger code of ethics in remarks at an annual judicial conference in California. She signed on to the Supreme Court’s new code of ethics last year, but in Thursday’s remarks she said it needs an enforcement mechanism.
“Both in terms of enforcing the rules against people who have violated them but also in protecting people who haven’t violated them — I think a system like that would make sense,” Kagan said.
Biden said Monday that he looked forward "to working with the Congress to implement these necessary forms."
Even with the presidential push for reforms, getting such legislation passed through Congress is unlikely. Before he called off his presidential run, Biden huddled with House Democrats, saying he would need their help to enact changes — and most likely need to persuade some Republicans to cross the aisle, given their majority in the House and Democrats’ narrow majority in the Senate.
Senate Democrats introduced Supreme Court reforms last year, but Republican opposition thwarted the effort last month.
