President Biden Plans to Propose Term Limits and Ethics Code for Supreme Court, Report

by Karen Faulkner, Worthy News Correspondent

(Worthy News) – President Joe Biden plans to propose major reforms to the US Supreme Court, including term limits and an ethics code, the Washington Post reported on Tuesday, citing two sources familiar with the plans.

While Biden has previously been against reforming the Supreme Court, many in his Democratic party have been outraged at how the court has come to have a supermajority (6-3) of conservatives: Republican lawmakers blocked President Barack Obama from appointing a new Democratic justice in early 2016 on the grounds it was an election year, but then Republican President Trump appointed conservative justice Amy Coney Barrett just two months before the 2020 election.

Democrats have also accused conservative justices Clarence Thomas and Samuel Alito of corruption; articles of impeachment have been filed against them by Democratic congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez.

The issue of term limits for Supreme Court justices has long been debated. In 2018, the bipartisan Commission on the Practice of Democratic Citizenship, a project of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, wrote: “With increased lifespans since the eighteenth century, a justice may serve for a generation or longer, often decades more than the framers are likely to have imagined. Add to the mix the deepening polarization on the Court . . . and the actuarial luck of the draw, with one president filling many Supreme Court vacancies and another president few or none, and it is no wonder the power to make Supreme Court appointments has become such a contentious part of the presidential election process.”

Any reform to the Supreme Court would require the approval of Congress.

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