President also says presidential immunity for crimes should be removed and ethics rules for justices should be stricter

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.

  • dhork@lemmy.worldEnglish
    1534·
    3 months ago

    The problem is that doing any of these things in a matter which will stick will require amendments, because that is the only process that this compromised Supreme Court might respect. (And even that is not a given: I wouldn’t put it past them to say that any amendment not passed by a Founding Father is invalid, or something).

    So the first thing that needs to be done is to “pack” the court. (I prefer the term “unfuck”, but that is less PC). This can only be done if Democrats take the Presidency and both houses of Congres, and nuke the filibuster. But it’s that important. Dial the fucker up to 13, then go to Republicans and say “OK, now we need to work to fix the courts together. You can decline, but if you do you will watch Momala appoint 4 additional justices under the old rules, to lifetime terms, and bank on getting your own trifecta to re-fuck the Court”.

    While we have the amendment process open, we also need to set a limit to how long Congress can deliberate on any appointment, not just SC. Once a President makes an appointment, the Senate shouldn’t be able to sit on it indefinitely. It should be guaranteed to get a vote in the full Senate within X legislative days. The Senate can vote it down, of course, but then the President can nominate someone else. Republican Senators challenged Obama to make a centrist pick for the SC, and he did. Mitch and Lindsey sat on it for months because they knew that it would pass if it went to the full Senate. This process basically gives the Senate Leader a veto over both the President and the will of the overall Senate, and cannot be what the Founders intended.

    • jordanlund@lemmy.world
      571·
      3 months ago

      The trick with an amendment is even if you get the House and Senate, you still face ratification from the states.

      So 38 out of 50 state legislatures need to ratify the amendment.

      To put that in perspective… in 2020, Biden and Trump split the states evenly. 25/25, Biden also took D.C.

      To get to 38, you’d need ALL 25 Biden states + 13 Trump states.

      Even getting all 25 Biden states isn’t guaranteed because of those, 6 have Republican controlled state houses.

      So now you’re looking at needing as many as 19 Trump states?

      • dhork@lemmy.worldEnglish
        621·
        3 months ago

        Exactly. The path to an amendment is super difficult, and Conservative states have no incentive to do so while they have so thoroughly captured the Supreme Court. That’s why you pack the Court first. Appoint 4 liberal justices in their early 40s to lifetime appointments, and you will see much more of a push from those Conservative states for reforms.

        • Modern_medicine_isnt@lemmy.world
          146·
          3 months ago

          The democrats have no intention of getting this to pass. They just want to use it to get out the vote. The constitutional ammendment process was created to expect both parties to work together, that just isn’t the way things are anymore. So passing a constitutional ammendment is pretty much impossible.

          • dhork@lemmy.worldEnglish
            182·
            3 months ago

            Right. The only way to get Republicans to consider an amendment is to make the status quo untenable to them, so they prefer change.

            That’s why you pack the court with 4 40-yr-old Liberals who can use the current rules to push the Court leftward for 30+ years . That will get them to change the rules quickly.

            • AlpacaChariot@lemmy.worldEnglish
              2·
              3 months ago

              I’m not from the US so sorry if this is a dumb question, but why would this push the court leftwards for 30+ years? Wouldn’t the republicans just pack the court at the next opportunity to swing it back in their favour?

              • titaniumarmor@lemmy.world
                3·
                3 months ago

                Appointing a justice can be very difficult to do if your party doesn’t control the Senate. If Democrats control the Senate or the presidency, then Republicans won’t be able to stack the court.

              • dhork@lemmy.worldEnglish
                2·
                3 months ago

                Packing the court requires an act of Congress, which the President would then need to sign. So it’s not practical to do in a partisan fashion unless one party has the Presidency and both Houses of Congress. If Democrats get that in the next Congress, and expand the Court, then Republicans need to win them all back at the same time to mess with it.

                And without an amendment, the only practical way to mess with the court is to increase it.

            • Modern_medicine_isnt@lemmy.world
              2·
              3 months ago

              Yeah, but then the dems won’t want the change since they control the court at that point. Both sides are in this for themselves, that is the nature of a system based on popularity.

          • Wilzax@lemmy.world
            41·
            3 months ago

            Unless it’s to patch a massive oversight in the Constitution like the 25th amendment.

            Or to prevent Congress from raising their own salaries with immediate effect, like with the 27th amendment.

            I think demonstrating how this is a massive oversight first will get MANY states on board with fixing the supreme court.

            • Modern_medicine_isnt@lemmy.world
              1·
              3 months ago

              The last ammendment was in 92. The political landscape has changed since then. Both sides run mainly on opposing the other, which means bipartisan anything is very unlikely. They couldn’t even pass an immigration reform bill because the conservatives didn’t want to give Biden a win. This would be even harder.

      • dhork@lemmy.worldEnglish
        292·
        3 months ago

        The US Senate only has 100 members (2 per state), and since the body is so small they pride themselves on not limiting debates there. But at some point they do need to decide to progress to a vote, and to do that someone makes a “cloture” motion to close debate on that issue and proceed to a vote. In the US Senate, a cloture motion needs 60 votes to pass.

        What this means is that if a minority wants to kill a bill, all they need to do is maintain 41 votes against ending debate. It can never proceed to a vote, then, even if more than 50 Senators are in favor. This is what we call a fillibuster: when enough Senators prevent a measure from being voted on.

        This filibuster is just a Senate rule, though, and can be removed by a simple majority vote of the Senate. In the current Democratic majority, though, there were just enough Senators who didn’t want to nuke the rule to keep it in place. They are leaving, though, so if Democrats retain the Senate they will probably have the votes to change the rule.

        The drawback is that someday, Republicans will take back the Senate, and if there is no filibuster Democrats in the Minority will have lost a key tool to gum up a Republican majority. But the SC is more important than all that. We need to reform the court ASAP, no matter the political cost.

        • ChickenLadyLovesLife@lemmy.worldEnglish
          9·
          3 months ago

          Democrats in the Minority will have lost a key tool to gum up a Republican majority

          Quick, name the last time Democrats with a Senate minority actually used the filibuster to block the Republican agenda. Whereas Republicans only have to threaten to filibuster (and not actually stand there talking for days on end) to block the Democratic agenda.

        • Tudsamfa@lemmy.world
          4·
          3 months ago

          I have absolutely no experience or stakes in this, but from my outside perspective, I doubt a Republican majority would keep the filibuster themselves once it’s an advantage to the Democrats. That trust to not abuse it and have it not be abused against you has been completely eroded in the past years.

      • Steve@communick.newsEnglish
        16·
        3 months ago

        Remove it as an an option.

        Right now, any one senator can stop a vote on any bill by announcing they filibuster it.
        That used to (decades ago) require them to stand and talk as long as they were able, to delay voting on the bill.
        Now without the “talking filibuster” requirement, it becomes trivially easy for any senator to stop anything they don’t like.

        A filibuster can be broken, and a vote can be forced to happen, if 60 of the 100 senators agree to it.
        That almost never happens, as no one party ever gets a 60 seat “super-majority”.

        Removing the filibuster will allow most any bill to pass with a standard 51% majority.
        Stopping the minority party from blocking everything they don’t like.

        The rules of the Senate itself can be changed with with a simple 51% majority, since they aren’t Laws that govern the land.
        So it is possible to eliminate the filibuster without requiring a filibuster breaking super-majority.

      • Leeks@lemmy.world
        7·
        3 months ago

        One of the ways to stall a bill is to talk about it forever. Here’s the wiki explaining it.

        Technically speaking the filibuster is only acceptable because the rules of congress allow them, but the rules are changed and Agreed on by all members every year. So “nuke the filibuster” would mean to disallow it in the procedural rules of congress.

        • USNWoodwork@lemmy.world
          1·
          3 months ago

          There is an old army manual that says if you are ever forced to work for the enemy, try to push as many things as possible into committee decisions, because it looks like its helping, but also slows everything down to a crawl/halt.

    • unalivejoy@lemm.eeEnglish
      53·
      3 months ago

      I prefer the term “unfuck”, but that is less PC

      Unfortunately, it is impossible to be unfucked. Nobody can ever unfuck you.