Customize Consent Preferences

We use cookies to help you navigate efficiently and perform certain functions. You will find detailed information about all cookies under each consent category below.

The cookies that are categorized as "Necessary" are stored on your browser as they are essential for enabling the basic functionalities of the site. ... 

Always Active

Necessary cookies are required to enable the basic features of this site, such as providing secure log-in or adjusting your consent preferences. These cookies do not store any personally identifiable data.

No cookies to display.

Functional cookies help perform certain functionalities like sharing the content of the website on social media platforms, collecting feedback, and other third-party features.

No cookies to display.

Analytical cookies are used to understand how visitors interact with the website. These cookies help provide information on metrics such as the number of visitors, bounce rate, traffic source, etc.

No cookies to display.

Performance cookies are used to understand and analyze the key performance indexes of the website which helps in delivering a better user experience for the visitors.

No cookies to display.

Advertisement cookies are used to provide visitors with customized advertisements based on the pages you visited previously and to analyze the effectiveness of the ad campaigns.

No cookies to display.

Biden’s long-shot plan to overhaul Supreme Court

Biden’s long-shot plan to overhaul Supreme Court

AUSTIN – Joe Biden unveiled plans on Monday for sweeping US Supreme Court reforms, as he seeks to cement his legacy in the twilight of his presidency despite Republicans branding the proposals dead on arrival.

Stung by shock rulings on abortion and other topics, and by a series of scandals involving the conservative-dominated court, Biden called for 18-year term limits for justices, and an enforceable ethics code.

“Extremism is undermining public confidence in the court’s decisions,” Biden said in a speech outlining the “bold” plans at the Lyndon Baines Johnson Presidential Library in Austin, Texas.

Making his first speech on the road since dropping out of the 2024 election, Biden also proposed a constitutional amendment to reverse the Supreme Court’s recent ruling backing Donald Trump’s claims of presidential immunity.

“There are no kings in America,” he said, at the library, which celebrates the legacy of Johnson, or LBJ, the last incumbent US president not to seek a second term back in 1968.

Biden’s move follows a series of shock Supreme Court decisions, especially the 2022 repeal of the nationwide right to abortion, an issue that has become crucial in November’s election.

Vice President Kamala Harris, now the presumptive Democratic presidential nominee, said in a statement that she and Biden both called on Congress to support the plans.

“These popular reforms will help to restore confidence in the court, strengthen our democracy, and ensure no one is above the law,” she said.

But, Biden’s proposals have almost no hope of getting through a deeply-divided US Congress, with Republicans holding a majority in the House of Representatives.

Republican Speaker Mike Johnson said in a statement that the “dangerous gambit of the Biden-Harris administration is dead on arrival in the House”.

Biden, however, retorted in his speech that Johnson’s “thinking is dead on arrival”.

The plans would see justices serve terms of 18 years with new justice appointed every two years. The ethics code would meanwhile force judges to declare gifts and possible conflicts of interest.

The US Supreme Court plays an outsize role in determining the lives of ordinary Americans, with justices appointed for life deciding on almost every key issue, from reproductive health to the environment.

It currently has a sic to three conservative majority, including three right-leaning justices appointed by Trump while he was president.

But public opinion has recently turned against an institution once seen as the last impartial arm of the US government. A recent poll shows nearly two-thirds of Americans believe the court’s decisions are mainly political.

As well as the abortion judgement, the court has also rolled back the power of federal agencies and blocked Biden’s signature student debt forgiveness plan.

It then partially ruled in early July in favour of Trump’s claims that he had immunity from prosecution for acts committed while president.

Trump is now using that ruling to challenge his recent criminal conviction in a porn star hush-money case and a series of other prosecutions.

Meanwhile, the Supreme Court has been rocked by ethics scandals involving arch-conservative justices.

Recently, Justice Clarence Thomas admitted that two luxury vacations he took in 2019 were paid for by a billionaire Republican political donor.

Thomas, the longest-service justice on the court, has also ignored calls to recuse himself from cases related to the 2020 election after his wife took part in the drive to keep Trump in power despite his electoral loss.

Justice Samuel Alito has rejected calls to recuse himself from some Trump-related cases after flags linked to the former president’s false election fraud claims were discovered to have been flown outside his home and vacation property.

Legal expert Steven Schwinn warned that Biden had a “close to zero” chance of getting the plan through Congress.

But Biden was probably trying to “raise public consciousness” and “introduce the Supreme Court as an election issue,” Schwinn, a law professor at the University of Illinois Chicago, told AFP. -Nampa/AFP