Just so you know, Joe Biden has been president of the United States since… well, he’s not really there. His plans for Supreme Court “reform,” which he will formally unveil next week, should serve as another piece of evidence that he has lost control.
“Two sources familiar with the situation informed POLITICO that President Joe Biden will present a proposal for drastically altering the Supreme Court on Monday. In a move that will undoubtedly surprise many, Biden will likely support putting term limits on judges and enforcing an ethics code. For a long time, the president had opposed efforts to restructure the Supreme Court.”
In reaction to the court’s July 1 decision that presidents are immune from prosecution for “official acts” while in office—a decision that was made in a case brought by former President Trump—he is also anticipated to push for a constitutional amendment restricting immunity for presidents and specific other officeholders.
To be honest, none of this will materialize.
In addition to the countless other facts about our republic and its functioning that Joe Biden has never seemed to grasp, he also doesn’t appear to realize that the Supreme Court is a co-equal government department with the same authority as the Executive and Legislative branches. Apart from the Senate’s constitutionally specified “advise and consent” function and the ultimate reversal of impeachment and conviction, Congress has very little control over the Supreme Court. Only once, in 1804, did the House of Representatives impeach Associate Justice Samuel Chase, a George Washington appointee to the Court, only for the Senate to clear him.
Beyond that, the president and Congress have no power over the Supreme Court.
Not only that, but the supposed constitutional change is also a non-starter. Since the Supreme Court’s “Trump v. United States” ruling, at least one person has succeeded in accurately persuading an increasingly perplexed Joe Biden that a constitutional amendment would be necessary to extend presidential immunity. Once again, this is not progressing. It is a good thing that the Constitution is hard to change by design because otherwise, liberals would have done away with the majority of the Bill of Rights by now. Although most ordinary people find the concept of presidential immunity to be very esoteric, persuading three-quarters of state legislatures to approve such an amendment would probably be next to impossible.
Though it’s straightforward to call this a meaningless gesture, that’s not really how it is. The Biden administration’s decision to bring this up at this point is rather puzzling. This is the final, hopeless effort to salvage something positive from the Biden administration’s catastrophe and to leave a lasting legacy that goes beyond the depressing account of an elderly man grappling with physical and mental decline and a botched presidential bid.
We’ll cover the announcement when it’s made, but we already know what to expect; it will be just as Shakespeare portrays it—a story told by a fool, full of sound and fury, and meaningless. We anticipate the announcement to occur next week.
Author: Blake Ambrose
