President Joe Biden is set to call Monday for an overhaul of the Supreme Court and a constitutional amendment limiting his own power — reforms that might not be implemented but demonstrate his priorities in his final months in office.
Biden is scheduled to deliver remarks in the afternoon at the Lyndon B. Johnson Presidential Library in Austin, Texas, calling for a constitutional amendment saying former presidents don’t have any immunity from federal criminal indictments, trials, convictions or sentencing, according to a White House official.
The 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 wants Congress to create term limits for members of the Supreme Court, the White House official told NBC News, adding that Biden favors an 18-year term for justices, which he believes would avoid any single president’s having multigenerational influence on the judiciary.
In addition to term limits, Biden will call 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, according to the official.
Biden will lay 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 the day 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 but instead stayed at the White House during his administration’s initial investigation of the shooting.
In his address to the nation after having recovered from Covid-19 last week, Biden explained why he chose to end his re-election campaign and how he planned to spend his final months in office. He hinted then about supporting major changes to the Supreme Court.
“I’m going to call for Supreme Court reform because this is critical to our democracy,” Biden said from the Oval Office.
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 toward court reform follows recent controversies involving Justices Clarence Thomas and Samuel Alito and decisions led 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.”
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 on Thursday. She signed on to the Supreme Court’s new code of ethics last year, but in last week’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.
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.