Pointing to the U.S. Senate’s “advice and consent” role for nominations, Senate Republican Minority Leader Mitch McConnell blasted President Biden’s call for Supreme Court reforms in response to a series of mostly-conservative ethics scandals.
President Biden is advocating for 18-year term limits for Supreme Court justices and a system allowing presidents to nominate new justices every two years. Additionally, he proposes an enforceable code of ethics for the court and a constitutional amendment to reverse the right-wing justices’ recent grant of “absolute” immunity from prosecution for criminal acts committed under the umbrella of “official acts.”
In a floor speech on Monday, Minority Leader McConnell claimed these changes would fundamentally alter the Supreme Court, stating it would “eliminate” the institution “as we know it.”
“They decided the time has come to eliminate the Supreme Court as we know it,” said McConnell. His own decisions to block then-President Barack Obama’s Supreme Court nominee to replace the late Antonin Scalia in February 2016, nearly nine months before the presidential election, and to push through then-President Donald Trump’s nomination of Amy Coney Barrett just weeks before the 2020 election, have been seen as extreme moves that reshaped the Court.
Democrats have accused McConnell of “stealing” two Court seats. “In his op-ed, the President says he wants term limits [for] his own justices,” McConnell stated. “Never mind what the Constitution says. Never mind the advice and consent role of the Senate.”
“President Biden and his leftist allies don’t like the current composition of the court, so they want to surrender the Constitution to change it,” he continued. “He wants what he calls an ethics code that already exists. What the President is actually proposing is a stealth process for people other than the justices to decide cases. Again, Constitution be damned.”
The Constitution stipulates that justices “shall hold their Offices during good Behaviour.” Some experts argue that changing what has become a lifetime appointment would require a constitutional amendment, while some Democratic Senators believe it could be achieved through legislation.
The ethics code McConnell refers to is currently not enforceable — it is effectively a suggestion without legal means to compel justices to observe it. In 2017, as Majority Leader, McConnell went “nuclear,” pushing through a rule change to allow Supreme Court nominees to be confirmed with a simple majority vote, rather than the previous 60-vote threshold.
The debate over Supreme Court reform continues to highlight the deep political divisions and the ongoing battle over the judiciary’s future in the United States.