Bad-idea Biden strikes again: His terrible Supreme Court reforms would hurt our democracy

I almost feel bad for President Joe Biden.

After he was pushed out of the presidential race by Democratic Party bosses last month, Biden has become – simply put – irrelevant as he waits out the end of his one term in office.

In a desperate ploy to remind people he’s still president (as all eyes have shifted to Vice President Kamala Harris), Biden penned an opinion column in The Washington Post this week, laying out several “reforms” for the U.S. Supreme Court.

The president's ideas should be shelved as quickly as his relevance.

Biden has joined the chorus of Democrats and their media allies saying there is a “crisis” at the highest court, with faux ethics scandals and “flag-flying” controversies .

This is a false narrative, and it’s a dangerous message to spread in an already polarized country. It probably wouldn’t surprise you that the only justices who have come under Democrats’ scrutiny are the ones appointed by Republican presidents.

Democrats are always smugly telling us how they are the only ones who can preserve democracy – while they back ideas that would undermine one of our nation’s most esteemed institutions.

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Biden wrote: “What is happening now is not normal, and it undermines the public’s confidence in the court’s decisions, including those impacting personal freedoms.”

What isn’t normal is the level of orchestrated attacks on one branch of government by another one. The steady drumbeat of negative attention on the conservative majority of the nation's highest court is what has caused public confidence to drop – not its actions.

Democrats throw a tantrum because they don't like court's decisions

Let’s be real about what’s going on. Biden and Democrats are angry about decisions the court has made in recent years. First and foremost, they are aghast that the Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade and returned limits on abortion to the states.

They want retribution.

Plus, the court has slapped down Biden’s numerous attempts at executive overreach throughout his presidency – most notably last year when it ruled that his efforts to “cancel” hundreds of billions in student debt were unconstitutional .

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Biden claims he has “ great respect for our institutions and the separation of powers ,” yet he has flaunted his disdain for the court’s decisions and specifically said its ruling on student loans wouldn’t “stop” him from similar efforts.

In other words, the Supreme Court did its job by serving as a check on another branch of government.

Biden’s proposed changes would blur the lines of the government’s separation of powers and the independence the court has enjoyed since its inception.

One upside: They are not likely to go anywhere soon. Republicans in Congress strongly oppose Biden’s blueprint, and any amendment to the Constitution would first need approval from two-thirds of the House and Senate , a high bar.

Yet, Harris – the likely Democratic presidential nominee – has embraced the reforms , meaning these are talking points that we will keep hearing about through the election.

Term limits for justices? Bad idea.

The worst idea is to impose term limits for justices. Biden proposes 18-year term limits for the nine justices , meaning a president would be able to appoint a new justice every two years.

It’s hard to miss the hypocrisy of Biden, who spent nearly four decades in the Senate , arguing passionately for term limits.

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While terms limits may sound nice – and offers Democrats a way to offload the sitting justices they despise – it goes against what our founders envisioned in the Constitution when they clearly wrote that justices and federal judges “ shall hold their Offices during good Behaviour .”

In other words, these are lifetime appointments, until death, retirement or impeachment intervene.

Biden once opposed meddling with the high court, including efforts to “pack” the court to dilute justices whom one may not like. What Biden is proposing now is not unlike what President Franklin Roosevelt tried to do in 1937 , when he was perturbed that the Supreme Court had blocked some of his big-government expansion.

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Adam White, a senior fellow at the American Enterprise Institute who served in 2021 on Biden’s Presidential Commission on the Supreme Court of the United States , has closely studied policies such as term limits and court-packing. While he came into the assignment open to term limits via constitutional amendment, White told me he concluded that they'd be unwise in part because of fundamental shifts they'd spur in presidential power and the role of the Senate in confirming judicial nominations .

Plus, various term-limit proposals are really just “ court-packing by another name ,” White observed.

Biden may desperately want to stay relevant, but misguided proposals to shake up the Supreme Court aren’t the way to go about it.

Ingrid Jacques is a columnist at USA TODAY. Contact her at ijacques@usatoday.com or on X, formerly Twitter: @ Ingrid_Jacques .

You can read diverse opinions from our USA TODAY columnists and other writers on the Opinion front page , on X, formerly Twitter, @usatodayopinion and in our Opinion newsletter .

This article originally appeared on USA TODAY: Bad-idea Biden strikes again: His terrible Supreme Court reforms would hurt our democracy