President Joe Biden has unveiled a proposal for changes at the U.S. Supreme Court, calling on Congress to establish term limits and an enforceable ethics code for the court’s nine justices, the Associated Press reports. He’s also pressing lawmakers to ratify a constitutional amendment limiting presidential immunity. The White House on Monday detailed the contours of Biden’s court proposal. While it appears to have little chance of being approved by a closely divided Congress with just 99 days to go before Election Day, Democrats hope it will help focus voters as they consider their choices in a tight election. The likely Democratic nominee, Vice President Kamala Harris, who has sought to frame her race against Republican ex-President Donald Trump as “a choice between freedom and chaos,” said the court’s fairness had been called into question following recent decisions.
Biden is calling for doing away with lifetime appointments to the court. He says Congress should pass legislation to establish a system in which the sitting president would appoint a justice every two years to spend 18 years in service on the court. He argues term limits would help ensure that court membership changes with some regularity and adds a measure of predictability to the nomination process. He also wants Congress to pass legislation establishing a court code of ethics that would require justices 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. Biden also is calling on Congress to pass a constitutional amendment reversing the Supreme Court’s recent landmark immunity ruling that determined former presidents have broad immunity from prosecution.
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