The Supreme Court of the United States has a bit of a credibility problem. A June 2024 poll found that 7 in 10 Americans believe the nation's highest court puts ideology above impartiality.

Now, President Biden is looking at a potential solution which could remake the court.

"I’ve been working with constitutional scholars for the last three months, and I need some help," Biden said on a call to the Congressional Progressive Caucus, reports the Washington Post. As he described to the group, his proposal for the Supreme Court would include term limits and an enforceable ethics code—two things the 235 year old institution has never faced. The caveat, however, is that Biden's plan would require congressional approval, and that seems unlikely.

In October, Democratic Senator Sheldon Whitehouse introduced a bill that would limit Supreme Court appointments to 18-year terms. His bill was co-sponsored by eight other Democratic senators, but have yet to leave the Judiciary Committee or even be voted on.

But Harvard Law professor and Constitutional Law scholar Laurence Tribe argued in an op-ed that SCOTUS reform "needn't take long." As he argued:

When the court prevented Congress from lowering the voting age to 18 in state along with federal elections in Oregon v Mitchell, it took under seven months for us to adopt the 26th amendment to repair that blunder. And the court can overturn its own egregiously wrong decisions quickly, as it did in 1943 when it overturned a 1940 ruling letting states force children to salute the flag against their religious convictions in West Virginia state board of education v Barnette.

As Bloomberg notes, Biden already created a commission to study SCOTUS reform early in his term. The commission submitted a nearly 300-page report on their finds, but Biden did not act on it at the time.

Ethical Concerns

Concerns over the impartiality of the Supreme Court were kicked into high gear when ProPublica published a bombshell report in April 2023 detailing how Justice Clarence Thomas accepted a number of luxury gifts and travel accomodations from billionaire, conservative donor Harlan Crow. Thomas failed to disclose these gifts over the last several years, and did not recuse himself from any case connected to Crow.

In May, [the New York Times published](https://www.nytimes.com/2024/05/16/us/justice-alito-upside-down-flag.html#:~:text=An upside-down flag%2C adopted,was considering an election case.) its own reporting on a "Stop The Steal" flag displayed Justice Samuel Alito's house. In a follow-up report, it was exposed that a flag popular among Christian Nationalists was flying at the Alitos' beach property in New Jersey. Alito has also failed to recuse himself from cases involving the Stop The Steal movement, and claimed both flags were flown by his wife, not him.

Verdict

The validity of the Supreme Court rests on its reputation. Clearly, the last few years have seriously undermined the view both the American public and several political leaders have of the court. Biden's plan to reform the court may be a long shot, but term limits and an enforceable code of ethics seems like the most basic of standards.