Biden: Supreme Court mired in crisis of ethics
President Biden delivers remarks from Texas on his vision for radical changes to the Supreme Court.
President Biden’s push to impose radical changes to the Supreme Court caters to the left-wing base of the Democrat party from an administration that was once billed as a “moderate,” critics argue.
On Monday, Biden and Vice President Harris, who is now running at the top of the presidential ticket for Democrats in November, backed drastic measures for Congress to adopt, including term limits, ethics rules and a constitutional amendment to limit presidential immunity.
Biden, in an op-ed published in the Washington Post, said he has “great respect for our institutions and separation of powers” but “what is happening now is not normal, and it undermines the public’s confidence in the court’s decisions, including those impacting personal freedoms. We now stand in a breach.”
The move marks a nearly 180-degree pivot for Biden, who had generally bucked plans even from within his own party to make such changes to the high court.
President Biden walks down the steps of Air Force One at Dover Air Force Base in Delaware on July 17, 2024. (Susan Walsh/AP)
During the early years of his political career in the Senate, Biden called President Franklin D. Roosevelt’s plans to place term limits on older justices and packing the court “a bonehead idea.” Packing the court, or court packing, is a term for increasing the number of justices on a court.
On the campaign trail in 2020, he resisted calls to expand the size of the court, saying that it would undermine its credibility.
With Monday’s announcement, Biden hasn’t said he wants to pack the court. But on his way out the Oval Office door, he’s endorsing plans from the most radical wing of his party.
“The far-left calls to destroy the Supreme Court were answered first by a candidate desperate to save his failing campaign,” said Carrie Severino, president of Judicial Network.
BIDEN, HARRIS CALL FOR SUPREME COURT TERM LIMITS, CODE OF CONDUCT, LIMITS ON PRESIDENTIAL IMMUNITY
President Biden speaks at a campaign event at Pullman Yards in Atlanta on March 9, 2024. (Megan Varner/Getty Images)
“Now they will be championed by a candidate who needs to cater to dark money groups in the Arabella Advisors network like Demand Justice, Fix the Court and a host of other pop-up groups funded by liberal billionaires,” she added.
Arabella Advisors is a dark money fund that feeds various left-wing causes. Notably, Harris’ communications director, Brian Fallon, is the former head of Demand Justice, which is an Arabella-funded group that advocates for court packing.
Fix the Court, another Arabella-connected group, pushes for term limits for Justices.
“[Biden is] trying to gin up his base with this gimmick,” said GOP strategist Matt Gorman.
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Vice President Harris (Erin Schaff/Pool via Reuters)
“The idea that Joe Biden would advocate for term limits is laughable. The left can’t stand that they don’t control the court, so they’ll do whatever they can to take it by legislative force,” he said.
The ideological swing of the high court shifted when former President Trump appointed Justices Neil Gorsuch, Brett Kavanaugh and Amy Coney Barrett. The conservative block is certainly not always in a lockstep vote, but Democrats in Congress and in the White House have nevertheless claimed that about the Republican-appointed majority.
“President Joe Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris want to end-run the Constitution and destroy the Supreme Court because they can’t control it,” said Severino.
“Biden and Harris are declaring war on the separation of powers with this announcement,” she added.
The Harris campaign did not respond to Fox News Digital’s request for comment.
White House spokesperson Andrew Bates responded, “As he stands up for the rule of law and the integrity of the Supreme Court, President Biden is grateful for the support these proposals are receiving from bipartisan legal experts, members of Congress, and large majorities of the American people.
“Now, congressional Republicans have a choice to make: will they safeguard conflicts of interests on our nation’s highest court and help presidents remain above the law, or will they side with Joe Biden, conservative former judges, and their own constituents to protect principals that should override any partisanship?” said Bates.
Notably, the Supreme Court last year adopted a new code of conduct after months of scrutiny from Democrats in Congress.
“For the most part, these rules and principles are not new: The Court has long had the equivalent of common law ethics rules, that is, a body of rules derived from a variety of sources, including statutory provisions, the code that applies to other members of the federal judiciary, ethics advisory opinions issued by the Judicial Conference Committee on Codes of Conduct, and historic practice,” a statement signed by all the justices said.
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“The absence of a Code, however, has led in recent years to the misunderstanding that the Justices of this Court, unlike all other jurists in this country, regard themselves as unrestricted by any ethics rules. To dispel this misunderstanding, we are issuing this Code, which largely represents a codification of principles that we have long regarded as governing our conduct,” it said.