US President Joe Biden has reiterated plans for radical reform of the country’s powerful Supreme Court. “Extremism undermines public confidence in the court’s decisions,” Biden said on Monday (local time) in a speech at the Lyndon Baines Johnson Presidential Library in Austin, Texas.
The plans include limiting the current life-long term of office of Supreme Court judges to 18 years in the future. There will also be a binding code of ethics for judges. Biden also wants to reverse the court’s recent decision on former President Donald Trump’s immunity by amending the constitution. “There are no kings in America,” Biden said in Austin.
Biden’s proposals follow several highly controversial decisions by the conservative-dominated Supreme Court, including the reversal of the nationwide right to abortion in July 2022 and the decision to grant broad immunity to current and former presidents from criminal prosecution earlier this month. This decision, which came at Trump’s request, was hailed as a great success by the ex-president, who is facing four criminal proceedings.
Biden’s reform concept envisages the introduction of a rotation principle in the nine-member Supreme Court judges’ panel. According to this, the president would nominate a judge every two years for 18-year terms. This would reduce the possibility of “undue influence” being exerted on the court for generations to come during a presidency, the White House said.
However, given the majority situation in the US Congress, Biden’s plans have no chance of being implemented in the foreseeable future. This would require the approval of Trump’s Republicans, who currently hold the majority in the House of Representatives. The Republican Speaker of the House of Representatives, Mike Johnson, said the “dangerous” plan was doomed to failure.
