President Joe Biden‘s vision for Supreme Court reform is unlikely to be passed anytime soon, but legal analyst Harry Litman said that the president likely had another plan in mind when releasing his three proposals on Monday.
Biden, who dropped out of the 2024 presidential race last week, laid out three “bold reforms” for the country’s highest court in an opinion piece published in The Washington Post. The proposals include introducing term limits for justices and creating a binding code of ethics for the court. Biden also proposed overturning the Supreme Court’s recent ruling that broadened presidential immunity, arguing instead that former presidents should have no immunity for crimes they committed while in office.
Supreme Court reform has become a bi-partisan issue following a string of controversies involving conservative Justices Samuel Alito and Clarence Thomas. The high court adopted its first code of ethics last fall, although critics argue more action is needed to make sure justices are held to the standards.
Biden promised to focus on Supreme Court reform in his final six months in office during his first address to the nation after suspending his reelection campaign. But Litman, senior legal affairs columnist at The Los Angeles Times, wrote in an op-ed piece on Tuesday that there “is no chance of action on Biden’s proposals in the coming month, and the administration well understands that point.”
“Why then choose now to introduce them?” Litman asked. “…The straightforward explanation for the timing is to make the Supreme Court, now quite possibly the most unpopular of all federal governmental institutions, a focus of the election, which would presumably nudge voters toward Vice President Kamala Harris.”
Harris was endorsed by Biden after he dropped out of the 2024 election, and has quickly earned the support of her fellow Democrats. The vice president backed Biden’s proposal for Supreme Court reform on Monday.
Litman added in his op-ed that Biden’s proposals were more than “a mere political gesture” in the last 100 days or so of the election.
“Biden and the Democrats are also playing the long game, looking in particular to make the court a campaign issue,” he wrote. “Then if they win control of both chambers and the White House, they can portray their election as a mandate for substantial reforms.”
It is likely that Biden’s proposals would have to be implemented as constitutional amendments, meaning that they would have to pass both chambers of Congress by two-thirds. House Speaker and Republican Mike Johnson told a reporter on Monday that reforms would be “dead on arrival in the House.”
Other experts have seemingly agreed with Litman’s stance. Thomas Gift, the founding director of the Centre on U.S. Politics at University College London, previously told Newsweek that Biden’s High Court reform was a “symbolic gesture designed more to appease the progressive left.”
University of Illinois law professor Steven Schwinn also recently told AFP that while Biden has a “close to zero” chance of passing his reform proposals, the president is likely attempting to “raise public consciousness” and “introduce the Supreme Court as an election issue.”
Newsweek reached out to Harris’ campaign via email on Tuesday for comment.
Trust in the Supreme Court fell to its lowest point in decades after the justices ruled to overturn Roe v. Wade in June 2022, ending federal protections for abortion. The conservative majority, which has three justices who were appointed by Trump, has also faced backlash after a series of controversial rulings issued just before the end of its term earlier this month.
Reproductive rights have proven to be a winning issue for Democrats since the fall of Roe—while abortion has become a major topic point for Harris’ campaign, Trump appears to still be struggling to win over women voters.
Uncommon Knowledge
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Newsweek is committed to challenging conventional wisdom and finding connections in the search for common ground.
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