According to a Politico report based on information from two unnamed sources, President Joe Biden is set to unveil his Supreme Court reform proposals on Monday. The plan is expected to include support for implementing term limits for justices and establishing an enforceable ethics code for the court.
This announcement follows Biden’s recent statement during an Oval Office address, where he expressed his intention to push for court reform. The report also suggests that Biden may propose a constitutional amendment aimed at restricting immunity for presidents and certain other officials. This comes in response to a Supreme Court ruling from July that affirmed broad prosecutorial immunity for presidents.
Well, boys and girls, it turns out hypocrisy is a limitless resource that Joe Biden has no problem utilizing. The Internet doesn’t forget these things. Such as Biden’s phone conversation with Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on July 17, 2023, when “President Biden reiterated, in the context of the current debate in Israel about judicial reform, the need for the broadest possible consensus, and that shared democratic values have always been and must remain a hallmark of the US-Israel relationship.”
The next day, on July 18, Biden met in the Oval Office with President Itzhak Herzog and “discussed the need for a consensus-based approach to the judicial reform package.”
Earlier, on February 12, 2023, Biden’s mouthpiece Tom Friedman wrote this heartfelt pair of paragraphs:
“It’s a concern that the radical transformation of Israel’s judicial system that Netanyahu’s ultranationalist, ultrareligious coalition is trying to slam through the Knesset could seriously damage Israel’s democracy and therefore its close ties to America and democracies everywhere.
“Here is the statement that Biden sent me on Saturday afternoon when I asked for comment: ‘The genius of American democracy and Israeli democracy is that they are both built on strong institutions, on checks and balances, on an independent judiciary. Building consensus for fundamental changes is really important to ensure that the people buy into them so they can be sustained.’”
The Politico report noted that President Biden’s proposal comes amid his growing criticism of the Supreme Court and its recent decisions. The court’s conservative majority has issued rulings that have overturned federal abortion protections, dismantled affirmative action in higher education, and blocked stricter gun control measures and other initiatives favored by his administration.
Additionally, certain justices have faced personal scrutiny. Justice Clarence Thomas has been criticized for not disclosing expensive gifts and trips, some of which were provided by wealthy Republican supporters. Meanwhile, concerns have been raised about Justice Samuel Alito’s wife displaying flags outside their residence that were associated with the events of January 6 and efforts to contest the results of the 2020 election.
In my interview with MK Simcha Rothman (Religious Zionism) on the eve of Israel’s November 2022 election (Meet Religious Zionist Simcha Rothman, Ben Gvir’s Moderate Ally), he told me, “Some people hold that the court in Israel is moderate, it doesn’t interfere much in the business of the other two branches of government, it’s only 4% of the cases in which the court rules against the government. The majority of these petitions are thrown out.”
“Do you know how many cases the US Supreme Court handles each year?” he asked me. I came prepared: 60, I replied. I think he was impressed…
“Sixty, maybe eighty, depending on the year,” he agreed. “There was one year, in the 1950s, when they handled 200 cases – and it was a rare thing. The US has 50 states, and 330 million people, and Israel has about 9 million, so you would think that in Israel you’d have much fewer Supreme Court cases. But we have as many as 15,000 cases some years, in most years it’s 10,000. So, you’re talking about 4% out of 10,000, or 400 cases every year.”
If those cases are based on petitions by groups or individuals who have no direct connection to them–no right of standing, this burgeons into 400 opportunities for people’s lives to be destroyed, and their property lost, by someone they never directly offended.
“The High Court decides cases without proof, time and time again, solely based on appeals by groups without the right of standing,” Rothman pointed out. “They demolish homes based on those petitions. It’s crazy, there’s no other country that allows something like that to happen.”
“And it doesn’t reach only the settlements,” he noted. “Each time a municipality changes its zoning regulations, it can be stopped by individuals or groups who are not directly affected. That’s why zoning procedures in Israel take so long, which brings up the cost of constructing new housing. It affects the country in every way imaginable, and, of course, it affects the stability of the government.”
This is what, as Tom Friedman put it, “Netanyahu’s ultranationalist, ultrareligious coalition is trying to slam through the Knesset,” a reform of a corrupt, self-serving, insanely activist supreme court. And Biden was right when he told Netanyahu and Herzog that you can’t ram such changes without broad public support.
But when it comes to his own judicial coup: introducing retirement age for justices, enforcing a new ethics code that could end in the impeachment of two justices, depending on whether there’s a Democratic majority on the Hill – Biden is far from seeking broad support. He’s planning to slam it through before January 20, 2025, with help from lame-duck Democratic lawmakers.
To paraphrase the immortal Abbie Hoffman, Joe Biden is giving hypocrisy a bad name.
