Biden’s 41-year evolution on Supreme Court reform

CNN —

President Joe Biden’s 40-plus year evolution on reforming the Supreme Court appears to be complete.

Biden is finalizing plans to propose major structural changes to the third branch of government.

From a report by CNN’s MJ Lee and Devan Cole:

Chief among the changes Biden is planning to publicly back are term limits for the nine justices, who currently serve lifetime appointments. The president is also said to be preparing to throw his support behind an ethics code for the court that would contain an enforcement mechanism, which was notably absent from the code the court adopted last year.

Biden’s move is a long time coming for progressives and Democrats who have been pushing for court reform based on the following evidence:

► Citing an election year in 2016, Republicans delayed the appointment of a successor to Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia, refusing to hold a hearing for President Barack Obama’s nomination of Judge Merrick Garland, now Biden’s attorney general.

► Ignoring their own election year precedent, Republicans rushed through the appointment of a successor to Justice Ruth Bader Ginsberg, creating a new 6-3 majority of Republican-appointed justices that could last for decades.

► That new majority went in the opposite direction of public opinion, upending decades of precedent and reversing a federal constitutional right to an abortion.

► The conservative majority has also taken a more active role in striking down environmental policy while granting a form of superimmunity to presidents and reinterpreting the 2nd Amendment.

► Justice Clarence Thomas has been found to have accepted multiple gifts from billionaire friends.

► Thomas did not recuse himself from January 6, 2021, cases