Biden prepping to endorse sweeping changes to Supreme Court

an alternative hypothesis is that maybe, just maybe, Trump actually has been the victim of over-zealous and unwise prosecution. Just maybe.

 

Joe Biden was the head of the committee. I believe Clarence Thomas called him a "fork-tongued serpent" or something like that in his autobiography?

The animating issue for all five was that each side had a preferred outcome: Republicans wanted more conservative justices on the court and Democrats wanted more liberal justices. This issue still exists, and will continue to exist, so long as we have a zero-sum approach to nominations and confirmations. I've said the rest of my thoughts right now in responses to Os.

 

Joe Biden played politics with the court, and lost. That's his enduring legacy. He wants to fix it, by playing more politics. it didn't work then, and it won't work now.

 

the problem is not that justices are liberal or conservative, nor that they have life appointments, or even that they produce decisions we don't like....

...the issue is politicians playing politics with the court. stop doing that, and the "problem" goes away.

 

That isn't his enduring legacy.

He was in Washington for 50+ years and yes he certainly played political games at points during his tenure in the Senate and beyond.

 

The supreme court is fine. Reform would be fine too. I am not sure Biden should be leading this effort in his last few months. It isn't an emergency situation and I am sure Kamala could take this on in 2025.

 

he is the fount from which all our political dysfunction springs. Bork, Thomas, Estrada...all on him.

 

Okay - you do you boo.

 

the soft bigotry of Joe expectations.

 

This is a way for him to float some ideas out there without it hurting the party, he is a lame duck but what he is proposing is what America wants.

DD

 

roll call of other leaders worried about The Party:

Maduro, Putin, Xi...

 

I’m pretty sure Biden didn’t prevent Merrick Garland from even having a hearing, rushing Barrett’s nomination through after promising not to rush a UsSC nomination during an election year or convince Clarence Thomas to accept millions in gifts from people with business before the court.

 

this is a cynical ploy to give Harris an additional 100-day election cycle entity to run against: the Supreme Court. It has no hope of going anywhere, and I'm sure if and when Harris is elected you will never hear about it again.

 

tell me you know nothing about the Bork and Estrada hearings w/o saying you know nothing about Biden's tenure running the Judiciary committee.

 

I know quite a bit about it I also know that he wasn’t in the Senate when Merrick Garland or Amy Comey Barrett were up for nomination. While he was harsh on Thomas during his hearings I’m pretty sure that didn’t cause Thomas to accept millions in gifts from those before the court.

 

which came first, Bork/Estrada/Thomas or Garland?

 

And again what did those have to do with Garland, Barrett or Thomas accepting all those expensive gifts?

I suppose next you’ll blame Biden for Abe Fortas.

 

https://theglitteringeye.com/three-proposed-constitutional-amendments/

Dave Schuler writes:

Update
At Axios Stephen Neukam and Andrew Solender report that President Biden did not confer with congressional Democrats before making his Supreme Court reform proposals:

The White House didn’t consult Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Dick Durbin and other key congressional Democrats on President Biden’s proposals to dramatically overhaul the Supreme Court, Axios has learned.

Why it matters: The lack of coordination with Capitol Hill signals that Biden’s SCOTUS proposals amount to more of a pre-election messaging push than a legislative imperative.​

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more

 

cope harder. I'm sure you can figure this out.

 

link will work for everyone

https://www.wsj.com/articles/joe-bi...q5ql5lggigc&reflink=desktopwebshare_permalink

Biden’s Political Assault on the Supreme Court
His destructive plan would make the Justices servants of the politics of the day.
By The Editorial Board
July 29, 2024 at 6:01 pm ET

President Biden on Monday announced his plan to “reform” the Supreme Court, and it’s important to understand how radical this political moment is. The President is putting the full weight of the Democratic Party behind an assault on judicial independence and the constitutional order. You might call it an attack on democracy.

“I have overseen more Supreme Court nominations as senator, vice president and president than anyone living today. I have great respect for our institutions and the separation of powers,” Mr. Biden said in an essay in the Washington Post justifying his assault. “What is happening now is not normal, and it undermines the public’s confidence in the court’s decisions, including those impacting personal freedoms. We now stand in a breach.”

***
Never mind the spectacle of a man in public life for 50 years demanding term limits. The “breach” is his. As a Senator in 1987, he helped to defeat the superbly qualified Robert Bork for the Court because Bork endorsed judicial originalism. But the originalists have prevailed in the long run and now have great influence on the Court. This is what infuriates him and his fellow Democrats. So they are now willing to destroy the Court to supposedly save it.

“Destroy” is not too strong a word. Mr. Biden is proposing to subject the Court to an ethics regime “enforceable” by someone other than the Court itself. His conceit is that this merely means the Justices would have to abide by the Code of Conduct of the Judicial Conference of the United States.

But the Justices already have a code of conduct they enforce that is nearly the same as that judicial code. The difference is the demand for outside enforcement. Democrats on the Senate Judiciary Committee want lower-court judges to investigate charges of ethics violations and then rule on the Justices’ behavior.

This is an invitation for partisans to besiege the Court with complaints, however trivial. If you want to know how that would go, consider that last month the 11th Circuit Court of Appeals stopped accepting duplicative complaints about Judge Aileen Cannon, who is sitting on the Donald Trump documents case. The circuit court received more than 1,000 complaints in a week as part of what it called an “orchestrated campaign.”

Mr. Biden says his reform will “restore trust and accountability to the court and our democracy,” but it would do the opposite. The deluge of ethics complaints, amplified by the press and partisans, would leave the public with the impression of routine corruption. This would further undermine respect for the Court’s decisions.

That’s even more true of Mr. Biden’s proposal to make it easier to disqualify Justices from hearing certain cases. The decision—often the duty—to sit on a case is at the heart of the judicial enterprise.

Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse’s ethics bill, which has passed the Senate Judiciary Committee, would let litigants at the Court file motions for recusal by Justices, whose colleagues could boot them off cases. This would make the Court an adjunct of whatever political atmosphere exists at a given time. The Justices targeted most would be those who issue unpopular opinions, however correct they are on the law or Constitution.

The President’s claim that the Court is currently “mired in a crisis of ethics” is simply false. Justice Thomas failed to disclose that he flew on a friend’s private aircraft before the Judicial Conference changed its rules to require that judges disclose such flights. He violated no judicial rules. No one has come up with any evidence that the Court’s rulings, or any Justice, has been influenced by gifts or other outside influence.

If Mr. Biden and Democrats were really concerned about ethics in government, they’d impose a total ban on Congress of all gifts, trips to conferences at fancy resorts, speaking fees, or anything else that provides even the appearance of a conflict of interest. But they won’t because the Members enjoy those perks and their anger at the Court has nothing to do with ethics. They are using ethics as a political ruse to gain more influence over the Court and its decisions.

Mr. Biden also endorsed an 18-year term limit for Justices, though the Constitution gives them life tenure. The idea is that Congress can create a “Senior Justice” position akin to the “senior status” that judges take on the circuit courts. But those lower-court judges take that status voluntarily, and Mr. Biden wants to forcibly retire Justices to duties akin to watching paint dry.

Adam White, who served on Mr. Biden’s judicial commission in 2021, makes the useful point that term limits would tie Supreme Court vacancies and appointments even more to presidential elections. He says this would further erode the appearance of judicial independence and make “the Court a spoil not just of politics, but of presidential politics exclusively.”

***
Mr. Biden also proposed a constitutional amendment to overturn the Court’s recent decision on presidential immunity, but we’ll leave that for another day. Suffice to say that it’s impossible to overestimate how pernicious Mr. Biden’s reform plan is. It doesn’t matter that its chances of passing are nil at the moment.

The President is giving this proposal an official Democratic Party imprimatur, and Vice President Kamala Harris was quick to endorse the plan on Monday. Its most damaging parts are a threat to pass the next time Democrats control all of the government.

And what about Republicans? Do they realize the Court’s future is on the ballot this year? Mr. Trump has spoken up in his fashion, but will Senators start explaining what is truly at stake? Maybe J.D. Vance could stop talking about cat ladies and start talking about the threat the Biden scheme poses to the Court and our constitutional republic.

Appeared in the July 30, 2024, print edition as 'Biden’s Assault on the Supreme Court'.


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