President Joe Biden wants to change the rules for the Supreme Court, as conservatives push back

President Joe Biden traveled to the Lyndon Baines Johnson Library and Museum in Austin on Monday afternoon to commemorate the 60th anniversary of the signing of the Civil Rights Act.

He recalled hearing the news of President John F. Kennedy getting shot on the radio as a college student in November 1963. At the time, the country asked President Lyndon Johnson to find a path forward. Biden quoted Johnson’s first address, where he says, nothing “could more eloquently honor President Kennedy’s memory (than the) earliest passage of the civil rights bill.” A year after the assassination, Johnson signed the Civil Rights Act.

“President Johnson understood what President (Abraham) Lincoln understood in his own time, that the courts would determine the scale and scope, the scale and scope of our laws,” Biden said. Johnson wasn’t afraid to challenge the courts: he nominated Thurgood Marshall, who became the first Black person to serve as a Supreme Court Justice, Biden said.

The president claimed the U.S. Supreme Court has “extremist” views. He cited the overturning of Roe v. Wade, and the recent ruling in Trump v. the United States that established presidents have immunity for some actions taken while in office. “This nation was founded on the principle there are no kings in America,” Biden said.

Biden touted his 36 years in the Senate, where as chairman and ranking member of the Judiciary Committee, he oversaw “more Supreme Court nominations as senator, vice president and president, than anyone in history, anyone alive today.” Two years ago, he appointed Supreme Court Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson.

As he leaves office, he is hoping to make changes to the highest court in the U.S.

What are President Biden’s proposed Supreme Court reforms?

Earlier Monday, his administration unveiled three reforms it is proposing for the U.S. Supreme Court in an opinion article in The Washington Post.

First, Biden wants to pass a constitutional amendment called the No One is Above the Law Amendment that would supersede the Supreme Court’s June ruling on presidential immunity.

“The court made a ruling for one a former president. No other president in history has asked for this kind of immunity for criminal actions. And no president, no former president, not me, not one, not one as and for sure, having given ... any exception to this with such a mandate,” the president said.

His second proposal deals with imposing term limits for the Supreme Court justices. This, Biden said, would ensure the bench changes regularly and predictably. The president created a Presidential Commission on the Supreme Court of the United States, including liberal and conservative constitutional scholars. Based on the commission’s report, Biden said he believes “the best structure is the 18-year term limit.”

The third and final proposal is constructing a binding code of conduct for the Supreme Court. At present, the code of ethics, formalized earlier this year, is suggestive, not binding. Biden proposed requiring justices “to disclose gifts, refrain from public political activity (and) recuse themselves in cases in which they have their spouses have a financial or other conflict of interest.”

Vice President Kamala Harris backed Biden’s push for reform, saying their administration believes “that the American people must have confidence in the Supreme Court.”

“Yet today, there is a clear crisis of confidence facing the Supreme Court as its fairness has been called into question after numerous ethics scandals and decision after decision overturning long-standing precedent,” the vice president said in a statement, adding the reforms will “restore confidence in the court.”

According to Gallup polling from 2023, the Supreme Court’s approval rating has declined to its lowest point since 1987, with more than half of Americans surveyed disapproving of the court’s performance.

What are critics saying about President Biden’s proposed Supreme Court reform?

After his arrival at the Austin-Bergstrom International Airport on Air Force One, reporters asked Biden his thoughts on House Speaker Mike Johnson, R-La., declaring the proposal “dead on arrival” in Congress.

Biden said he thinks it’s Johnson who is “dead on arrival.” He added he will “figure out a way” to pass the reform package.

Shortly after Biden’s remarks, Rep. Burgess Owens, in a statement to the Deseret News, condemned the president’s proposal.

“On his way out of the White House, President Joe Biden proposed an extreme overhaul of the Supreme Court that has nothing to do with ‘restoring accountability’ and everything to do with securing the Democratic Party’s goal: expanding and packing the court with radical and partisan justices to do the Left’s bidding,” Owens, who represents Utah’s 4th District, said.

Leonard Leo, the chairman of the board of directors of the Federalist Society, said if Democrats and the Biden White House were actually concerned about ethical violations, then they should ban any elected official from receiving any gifts, “starting with Congress, where the real corruption is,” as RealClearPolitics’ Susan Crabtree reported.

For the Supreme Court judges, it “would include the things where influence peddling is most present and dangerous—and that’s when the liberal Justices rub shoulders with influencers at places like law schools, bar associations, progressive think tanks and their conferences, and other groups and events funded by Left-wing billionaires, where they support real vested interests in the work of the Court,” Leo said.

He continued, “If Democrats want to adopt an across the board ethics ban for all branches, I am in favor of that: no jets, no meals, no speaking honorarium, no gifts for anyone from anyone for any reason in any branch, starting with Congress. Until they support that, let’s all be honest about what this is: a campaign to destroy a court that they disagree with.”