By Tom Ozimek
Contributing Writer
President Joe Biden said in a Wednesday speech from the Oval Office that he plans to call for Supreme Court reform in his final stretch as America’s commander-in-chief.
Biden made the remarks after explaining his decision not to seek reelection and laying out his plans for his final six months in office.
“Over the next six months, I’ll be focused on doing my job as president,” he said, highlighting key goals such as boosting economic growth, lowering inflation, tightening gun control, and safeguarding the planet from what he described as a “climate crisis.”
“And I’m going to call for Supreme Court reform because this is critical to our democracy, Supreme Court reform.”
There has been media speculation in recent weeks that Biden is considering establishing an enforceable ethics code for Supreme Court justices and ending lifetime appointments to the high bench.
White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre was asked during a July 24 press briefing whether Biden was still “committed” to pushing for Supreme Court reform during his final months in office.
“The president believes that when you hold a high office, you should be held by a certain ethics and transparency,” Jean-Pierre said. “That’s something that the president believes, and so he certainly will continue to do everything that he can. I don’t have any policy announcements to make at this moment.”
While Biden has resisted pressure from the progressive wing of the Democratic Party to adopt measures such as imposing term limits on Supreme Court justices or packing the high court with additional justices, he did create a commission to examine possible Supreme Court reforms, including ending lifetime appointments. Ultimately, the 34-member commission did not endorse adding seats to the high court and took a neutral stance on term limits.
Darry Allen Sragow, a Democratic political consultant, told Reuters he was surprised that Biden mentioned Supreme Court reform in his Oval Office speech.
“In a sense, that came out of nowhere. He didn’t have to put that in the speech, but the fact that he mentioned that suggested to me that in his mind, for the future of the country, this has become a high priority and what he is presumably referring to is the recent decisions coming out of a Supreme Court that is dominated by very conservative justices,” Sragow said.
President Donald Trump appointed three justices to the high bench, creating a strong 6-3 conservative majority. The Supreme Court’s current composition has allowed for several key rulings praised by conservatives, including the landmark 2022 decision in Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization, which effectively overturned Roe v. Wade and allowed states to decide their own abortion policies.
Another was a 2023 decision that struck down the use of racially discriminatory admissions policies at American colleges, ending the use of so-called affirmative action programs in higher education.
While campaigning for reelection, Biden said at a rally in Philadelphia at the end of May that whoever wins the presidential election in November will likely be able to appoint several Supreme Court justices to replace justices who will probably be retiring over the next four years.
“If, in fact, we’re able to change some of the justices when they retire and put in really progressive judges like we’ve always had, tell me that won’t change your life,” Biden said, expressing hope that the high court’s composition would swing back in favor of progressives.
Trump left the White House in January 2021, having appointed more than 200 judges to the federal bench, including nearly as many federal appeals court judges during his four-year term as President Barack Obama appointed over the course of eight years.
Trump has expressed satisfaction with the Supreme Court appointments made during his term as well as the justices’ jurisprudence.
“Maybe we’ll get three or four more. Can you imagine?” Trump said at a summit on June 28, referring to the prospect of being able to appoint more Supreme Court justices if he wins the 2024 race for the White House.
