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In his most recent Washington Post op-ed, U.S. President Joe Biden announced his official support for reforming the U.S Supreme Court. Biden’s announcement came in response to a collapse of American public trust in the Supreme Court — and in the judiciary branch as a whole — following the court’s controversial ruling in Trump v. United States. New academic research, inadvertently published on the same day as Biden’s op-ed, suggests that this collapse in public trust is even more acute than many Americans had believed.
Watch the above video as Straight Arrow News contributor Adrienne Lawrence reviews this new data and explores how different approaches toward Supreme Court reform might or might not succeed in today’s divided political climate.
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The following is an excerpt from the above video:
But still, I do like the idea, and I also like Biden’s second proposal. The president proposes term limits for Supreme Court justices. Ah, that’s so great! Eighteen years to be exact. And this would ultimately be staggered, such that a new justice would be appointed every two years. Staggering appointments is a fantastic idea. It indeed would help prevent any one presidency from changing the course of the nation for centuries from the bench, because that’s exactly what happened with Trump’s administration.
[Trump] appointed Neil Gorsuch, then Brett Kavanaugh and then Amy Coney Barrett. The imbalance created with the Right on the court right now has left our generation and the next and the next with an imbalance that does not represent the generation that is to come. And as for well, term limits, I think you can watch my Aug. 7 Straight Arrow News commentary. I am a fan of getting rid of those lifetime seats, really, because look at how it’s playing out so far. Clarence Thomas is Exhibit A for why terms should be capped. He’s the longest serving justice on the U.S. Supreme Court currently, and he is clearly bought and paid for by billionaires like Harlan Crow.
