Biden Endorses Forcing SCOTUS To Shape The F*ck Up

The president calls for some modest but important Supreme Court reforms.

It has taken almost four years and the Supreme Court telling presidents to go ahead and commit any crimes they want; taking away a person’s right to an abortion; legalizing bribery; ending affirmative action; allowing officially sanctioned prayer back into public schools; gutting the regulatory power of the executive branch; wrecking a presidential student debt relief program; striking down even modest gun control before having to backtrack and say “oops, we didn’t mean dudes who beat their wives, you guys shouldn’t have guns, our bad on that one”; and who knows what else we can’t remember off the top of our spinning heads. To say nothing of two particular justices selling off their services like emcees at a livestock auction!

But President Old Handsome Lame Duck Joe Biden has finally endorsed some Supreme Court reforms to hopefully check the Court’s power, as is proper in our system of the three branches of government checking and balancing each other. So a very small and cautious hooray!

We could also issue a less cautious “What took you so fucking long,” but in the spirit of generosity, oh whoops, sorry, our laptop’s “delete” key seems to be stuck.

Anyway, Biden published his long-overdue endorsement of Supreme Court reform in The Washington Post on Monday morning. And while the proposals sound fairly modest to us, it beats his previous position of standing up a committee to study the problem, which is DC-speak for “I have no interest in this but want to look like I am doing something without doing anything,” followed by the committee issuing a report that took 300 pages to say nothing that could not have been communicated by a shrugging emoji.

Biden starts off by acknowledging that he has “great respect for our institutions and the separation of powers,” but clearly the rampage of recent years, in which the Court has attempted to roll back most of the 20^th century, is “not normal.” Then it is on to the proposals:

First, I am calling for a constitutional amendment called the No One Is Above the Law Amendment. It would make clear that there is no immunity for crimes a former president committed while in office.

This reform attacks a specific ruling, the one that gifted Donald Trump immunity for attempting a coup. It is the presidential equivalent of a clapback at the Court for its insanely reckless decision that turned the United States into the sort of monarchy our forefathers fought an entire revolution to reject.

Getting such an amendment through Congress and having it ratified by three-quarters of the states is an absolutely laughable idea in our polarized time. But as political messaging, eh, sure, fine, whatever.

Second, Biden endorses term limits for SCOTUS justices:

Term limits would help ensure that the court’s membership changes with some regularity. That would make timing for court nominations more predictable and less arbitrary. It would reduce the chance that any single presidency radically alters the makeup of the court for generations to come. I support a system in which the president would appoint a justice every two years to spend 18 years in active service on the Supreme Court.

Your Wonkette would add a “no grandfathering in for current justices” to this one, meaning Clarence Thomas and Sam Alito — and John Roberts, for that matter — must immediately GTFO, and don’t let the door hit ya where the good Lord split ya.

Third, I’m calling for a binding code of conduct for the Supreme Court. This is common sense. The court’s current voluntary ethics code is weak and self-enforced. […] Every other federal judge is bound by an enforceable code of conduct, and there is no reason for the Supreme Court to be exempt.

This is so common sense that we can’t believe it needs to be said, much less officially proposed by a president in the pages of The Washington Post. But even a current justice, Elena Kagan, recently called for a way to enforce the Court’s currently self-enforced code of conduct. We suppose that might make next term’s case conferences awkward when Thomas is passing around pictures of his most recent vacation on Harlan Crow’s yacht while Kagan glares at him, but tough noogies.

Biden ends his op-ed with a call to “prevent the abuse of presidential power” and the restoration of the public’s trust in the Court as a legitimate institution. That ship has probably sailed, and steering it back into port is a process that will likely take a couple of generations.

Might as well get started already.

[Washington Post / White House]

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