President also says presidential immunity for crimes should be removed and ethics rules for justices should be stricter
Joe Biden has called for a series of reforms to the US Supreme Court, including the introduction of term limits for justices and a constitutional amendment to remove immunity for crimes committed by a president while in office.
In an op-ed published on Monday morning, the president said justices should be limited to a maximum of 18 years’ service on the court rather than the current lifetime appointment, and also said ethics rules should be strengthened to regulate justices’ behavior.
The call for reform comes after the supreme court ruled in early July that former presidents have some degree of immunity from prosecution, a decision that served as a major victory for Donald Trump amid his legal travails.
“This nation was founded on a simple yet profound principle: No one is above the law. Not the president of the United States. Not a justice on the Supreme Court of the United States,” Biden wrote.
Well said. There’s a strong tendency for people to revere tradition and the constitution a little too much. They forget that our democracy is old (as far as modern democracies go). The constitution was set up by a bunch of wealthy landowners (and some of them were slaveholders). It’s a collection of pretty bad compromises that had to be amended 27 times…and now is practically impossible to amend.
Supreme Court Justice is a very important and respectable position, but there’s nine of them (for now) because one person can’t be trusted with too much power. I think it should be limited even further. We give them too much veneration and power under the current system. Treating these people as infallible demigods is what got us into this mess to begin with.