The Supreme Court is a major issue in this election, thanks to the court’s conservative majority and its dangerous decisions recently. And now President Joe Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris want to reform it—and they’ve got backup from a key player: sitting Justice Elena Kagan.
On Monday, Biden called for Supreme Court reform in an op-ed in The Washington Post, supporting term limits for justices, an enforceable ethics code, and a constitutional amendment to overturn the court’s recent immunity ruling, which stops presidents from being criminally charged for official acts done during their presidency.
“This nation was founded on a simple yet profound principle: No one is above the law,” he wrote. “Not the president of the United States. Not a justice on the Supreme Court of the United States. No one.”
Harris quickly joined in, releasing a statement saying that “there is a clear crisis of confidence facing the Supreme Court as its fairness has been called into question after numerous ethics scandals and decision after decision overturning long-standing precedent.”
In his op-ed, Biden noted the “[s]candals involving several justices” and “conflicts of interest connected with Jan. 6 insurrectionists,” without naming names: Justices Samuel Alito and Clarence Thomas. Those scandals, Biden continues, “raise legitimate questions about the court’s impartiality.”
