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 reforming the Supreme Court in the wake of years of mostly-conservative ethics scandals.
President Biden is calling for 18-year term limits for the nation's top jurists, along with allowing presidents to nominate new justices every two years. He wants an enforceable code of ethics for the scandal-plagued court, and a constitutional amendment that would reverse the right-wing justices' recent grant of "absolute" immunity from prosecution for criminal acts while in office if they fall under the umbrella of "official acts."
Minority Leader McConnell in a floor speech on Monday claimed this would alter the court so dramatically it would "eliminate" it "as we know it."
"They decided the time has come to eliminate the Supreme Court as we know it," said McConnell, whose own decision to wholly block then-President Barack Obama's Supreme Court nominee to replace the late Antonin Scalia in February of 2016, nearly nine months before the presidential election, was seen as an extreme act that forever reshaped the Court. Later, his decision to push through then-President Donald Trump's nomination of Amy Coney Barrett just weeks before the 2020 election also was seen as an extreme move forever reshaping the court.
Democrats have alleged McConnell "stole" two Court seats.
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"In his op-ed, the President says he wants term limits [for] his own justices," McConnell says. "Never mind what the Constitution says. Never mind the advice and consent role of the Senate."
"President Biden and his leftist allies that don't like the current composition of the court so they want to surrender the constitution to change it," he continues. "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 only states justices "shall hold their Offices during good Behaviour."
Some experts say changing what has become a lifetime appointment would require a constitutional amendment, some Democratic Senators say it could be accomplished by passing a law.
The ethics code that McConnell refers to is not enforceable -- it is effectively a suggestion, there is no legal means to require justices observe it.
In 2017, as Majority Leader, McConnell went "nuclear," pushing through a mid-year rule change to allow Supreme Court nominees to be confirmed with a simple majority vote, rather than the previous 60-vote threshold.
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