President Joe Biden may love campaigning. He gave up on his own reelection bid, but he has joined the left’s movement to seize control of the Supreme Court by any means necessary. Supported the old idea He has scrapped new restrictions like term limits and an “enforceable code of ethics” and abandoned his past support for an independent judiciary, which he now sees as an obstacle to be overcome rather than a principle to be defended.
Biden’s The Washington Post Monday’s article misleads the American public in three ways. First, Constitution Limiting presidential terms does not mean the Supreme Court must follow suit. He has made no such proposal to the Senate, though he boasts that he served in the Senate for 36 years.
In fact, the Founding Fathers chose not to limit Supreme Court terms as a buffer against political manipulation, and the fact that judges on lower federal courts follow certain rules does not mean that the Supreme Court must do likewise. Because the lower courts were created by Congress, Congress has more power over them than it does over the Supreme Court. Created by The Constitution itself. (Related article: Greg Jarrett says there’s “zero chance” Biden will impose term limits on Supreme Court justices)
Second, Biden is repeating the left’s misleading claims about the need for “reform” that he now supports. The “ethics scandals” he refers to are: for exampleis a complete myth. Many Americans who hear about “undisclosed gifts” would assume that judges were required to disclose what could be called gifts. But these assumptions are false.
President Joe Biden has vowed to fight “extreme and dangerous” efforts by Republicans to curb abortion following the Supreme Court’s 2022 Dobbs decision. (Photo by Andrew Caballero Reynolds/AFP via Getty Images)
Biden also repeatedly falsely suggested that a judge should recuse themselves whenever a friend or spouse has an “interest” in a particular case — something neither federal recusal law nor the court’s code of conduct provides for.
Biden uses these misleading portrayals to claim that “reforms” are needed to address these fake problems. For example, he calls for an “enforceable ethics code” that would allow unlimited complaints by anyone about any behavior of a judge, which would be investigated and evaluated. This includes votes and opinions that do not advance their favored political interests. This kind of manipulation and harassment, which the left excels at, is the real reason for this proposal.
Biden has also called for limiting Supreme Court justices to 18 years of term. Presidential term limits have been in place for nearly 75 years, he points out. That change required a constitutional amendment, so Biden must agree that term limits on Supreme Court justices are necessary as well.
But the left doesn’t care how long a judge serves. After all, John Paul Stevens, Ruth Bader Ginsburgand Stephen Breyer Both justices served for more than 18 years, but Biden has never called for term limits. Like others on the left, Biden only objects to what justices he disagrees with do when they are on the court, not how long they serve.
The “reform” the Left really wants isn’t the structure of the Supreme Court, but the Supreme Court’s decisions on specific issues. They don’t like recent decisions like these: SEC vs. JahkessyThe Supreme Court has ruled that the right to a jury trial inNumber The amendment would prohibit the government from being judge, jury, and executioner in administrative proceedings that are not conducted by a court; or Roper Bright Enterprises v. RaimondoThe Supreme Court overturned a 1984 precedent that had essentially allowed administrative agencies to define their own powers.
And of course, Biden and the left. Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health OrganizationIn that case, the Supreme Court ruled that the silent Constitution does not protect the right to an abortion at all, returning the legal issue to the states as it existed for 200 years before the fantastical Roe v. Wade case.
Finally, Biden criticized the Supreme Court’s decision on presidential immunity. Trump vs. the United States Biden falsely claims that this makes the president a “king or dictator” and gives him “absolute” power. No one who has actually read the ruling could describe it that way.
The Supreme Court has made clear that, under fundamental principles of separation of powers, the President is entitled to presumptive immunity from criminal prosecution for official conduct. Previous rulings The president is immune from civil liability for official acts, a decision that was established in 1982, but Biden has never complained about that decision.
This does not give the president unlimited powers. The president can be impeached, removed from office, and barred from ever holding office again. Additionally, the president is subject to “indictment, trial, judgment, and punishment” under Article I, Section 3 of the Constitution, and can be criminally prosecuted for non-official acts.
In a recent decision, the Supreme Court sent the case back to the trial court to apply the proper standard to Trump’s case. Biden is riding the wave of propaganda without even knowing what the case will be.
Ruling to the contrary, as Biden proposes, would make it extremely dangerous for the president to take action that is often necessary in the areas of national security and foreign policy. Or does Biden now believe that a president could be charged with murder for, say, ordering a drone strike against a terrorist?
Biden clearly wants to use the Constitution as a prop and the Supreme Court as a punching bag. While public ignorance of our system of government in general and our judicial system in particular is something that needs to be remedied, Biden sees it as something to manipulate for political gain.
Our Founding Fathers believed that an independent judiciary is “essential” to the freedoms our political system enables. Biden is endangering our freedoms by undermining that independence for political gain.
Hans von Spakovsky and Thomas Zipping are senior legal fellows at the Heritage Foundation’s Edwin Meese III Center for Law and Judicial Studies.
The views and opinions expressed in this commentary are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the official position of the Daily Caller News Foundation.
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