Biden hints at major Supreme Court reforms in big, big policy shift

Finally, some good news around here. From the Washington Post:

President Biden is finalizing plans to endorse major changes to the Supreme Court in the coming weeks, including proposals for legislation to establish term limits for the justices and an enforceable ethics code, according to two people briefed on the plans.

That would be a momentous shift for Biden, who's largely ignored the Supreme Court's rampage through the last 200 years of American jurisprudence in favor of plodding institutionalism. Anecdote suggests it might have been the court's asinine and contemptuously ahistorical theories of supposed "presidential immunity" that pushed him over the edge:

Four days after that debate, the Supreme Court ruled that Trump was immune from prosecution for official acts during his first term in office. Less than an hour later, Biden called Laurence Tribe, a constitutional law professor at Harvard Law School, to discuss the ruling and the arguments for and against reforming the court.

It's really impossible to describe the audacity of the court rewarding Trump with immunity for criminal acts, simply because it's at odds with not only the Constitution but was plainly, very plainly, something the writers of that Constitution believed would be abhorrent. Granting presidents king-like powers to pursue corrupt acts under color of their authority was very much on the minds of the country's founders—it was the rationale of the Declaration of Independence, after all.

So it would be lovely, and just, if it really was the audacity of granting presidents a new ticket to commit crimes that pushed Biden from institutionalism to reformist. Not that it matters, so long as he's joined the team.

The Post article specifically mentions ethics reforms and term limits, neither of which are sufficient to the moment at hand; what are you going to do when the court brushes off both, declaring that the Pope of Narnia disallowed them in his 1320 epistle of drunken wisdom? If Biden truly intends to fight this fight he should start with the most urgent need, a major court expansion, and the bargaining can start from there.

Yes, Senate Republicans would block it. But there would be value, real value, in Biden announcing the names of 4 new nominees to fill out the court and having those nomination fights.

Biden's been remarkably progressive during his presidency, taking real steps to battle climate change, rebuild infrastructure, and rein in some of the corporate scofflaws who are now responding by throwing money at an American fascist movement in a last-ditch attempt to be rid of all regulations forever. There's no need to piddle around with term limits that the Supreme Court justices who are currently prioritizing the writings of misogynistic English witch-burners over the precedents set by every other American Supreme Court during their own terms.

The Federalist Society has truly turned the court into a den of unqualified and vapid corruption; if Biden isn't willing to use his new "the president can arrest and imprison whoever he wants" powers to, then he can at least water down the anarchist faction with a new set of qualified, Constitution-knowing experts.

Taking on the Supreme Court is a necessity if the Republican Party's embrace of violent fascism is going to be thwarted. It's also probably a damn good bit of campaign-trail theater. Trump's allies have Project 2025, a sweeping plan to remake all of government into a one-party oligarchy; voters who are now paying attention to that might well like to hear what sweeping changes the other side would suggest instead. Have the fight. Explain that the nation can't abide a Supreme Court willing to throw away the rule of law whenever one of their ideological allies gets caught by it, so by God it's time to clean up the mess they've made.

It might even convince a few of the court's conservatives to ponder whether they've crossed a line with their recent activism and need to relearn a bit of circumspection. Chief Justice John Roberts once painted himself as a moderate institutionalist at heart; now he strikes matches and burns down vast swaths of the law, mocking the anger of the dissenters as he does it. Bring the fight to him and let the public get a good long look at just how weak his offered-up defenses have gotten of late.