President Joe Biden may be leaving office in five months, but he wants to leave a permanent mark on his way out the door. Days after announcing he will not seek re-election last month, Biden proposed dramatic changes to the U.S. Supreme Court, including term limits and a new "ethics code." Biden's proposal would limit justices, currently appointed for life, to an 18-year term and would allow for the appointment of two new justices by every presidential term moving forward. His plan also calls for an outside ethics panel to oversee the court, with the power to punish justices or remove them from cases.
Legal experts are dubious at best about Biden's plan. Some compare it to the court-packing that has been done by corrupt regimes in places like Venezuela. Others see it as an election-year political exercise in response to left-wing anger over recent Supreme Court decisions. "Is this just a court-packing by another name, in terms of getting rid of the longest-serving justices, who happen to be Clarence Thomas, John Roberts and Sam Alito," says Ilya Shapiro, constitutional law expert in a recent Fox News interview. "Or is this some sort of court expansion, since every presidential term under the plan gets two justices?"
Biden's proposed outside ethics panel also raises serious constitutional and separation-of-powers questions. "For the justices to constantly have to deal with the threat, the sword of Damocles, of some lower panel of judges evaluating them or mandating that justices recuse, particularly on politically sensitive things," says Shapiro. "That would, ironically, pervert or corrupt the court in a way that these proposals claim to prevent."
Vice President Kamala Harris has also signed on to the Biden Supreme Court proposal, but Shapiro says it has virtually no chance of becoming a reality, since it would take a constitutional amendment to enact. "We have to recognize that this all a political messaging vehicle," says Shapiro.