What They’re Saying: President Biden’s Supreme Court Reform Proposal
This week, President Biden announced his support for a set of reforms to the Supreme Court, including term limits, a binding code of ethics, and a constitutional amendment undoing the Court’s ruling on presidential immunity.
After years of dangerous rulings rolling back our rights and countless ethics scandals, the movement for Supreme Court reform has been growing. The American people largely support reforms that would hold the Court more accountable to the public and uphold the rule of law.
What They’re Saying
Sherrilyn Ifill: “To remain sanguine about a runaway court, however, is to deny the very real and profound damage that such a court can do to the course of our democracy. With such an approach, we diminish visibility of the suffering of the victims of such a court’s careless regard for the effects of its decisionmaking… Congress has the power to impose significant restrictions on the court’s activities.” [Slate, 7/29/24]
Democrats May Have a Real Chance to Reform the Supreme Court: “The path to Supreme Court reform is beginning to take shape. Based on interviews on and off the Hill, there is a rough consensus and strategy that could actually lead Democrats to embrace Biden’s stance and act on the court — if they can win in November.” [Politico, 7/29/24]
Laurence Tribe and Dennis Aftergut: “We now have squarely before us a well-conceived proposal to reverse the far-rightward direction of this radical right US supreme court majority, in their headlong rush into a past of unequal justice for all.” [The Guardian, 7/30/24]
Biden Is Right: It’s Time to Fix a Very Broken Supreme Court: “The truth is that doing the right thing is often hard. Sometimes it requires courage to do hard things. Sometimes there must be many failures before success. But one requirement is universal to accomplishing hard tasks: you have to start… What matters is that the President of the United States is acknowledging the deeply broken state of the Supreme Court and calling for a solution.” [Daily Beast, 7/31/24]
Claire McCaskill: “There’s no question the Roberts Court is in a crisis. The American people do not trust it… Proposals like term limits have always been popular with voters, no matter who they are for. Republicans backing away from reform simply because the court is on their side right now is not a good look.” [MSNBC, 7/30/24]
Professor Austin Sarat: “No matter how Biden’s proposals play out…by going public with them in a high-profile manner, the president has offered the people of the United States a chance to make their voices heard about the kind of supreme court they want. It is now up to all of us to take him up on that offer and use our votes to weigh in on this most important question.” [The Guardian, 7/31/24]
