Jan 23, 2025 Story by: Publisher
President Trump revoked Executive Order 14023 of April 9, 2021, which is the Establishment of the Presidential Commission on the Supreme Court of the United States during his signing of multiple executive orders.
President Joe Biden issued Executive Order 14023, on on April 9, 2021. The order created the Presidential Commission on the Supreme Court of the United States. He charged a bipartisan panel of judiciary experts, scholars, and former judges with providing an analysis of the public debate for and against reforms to the Supreme Court. Eight months later the commission issued its report.
Biden recommended legislation to create an enforceable code of ethics for the nine justices; create 18-year term limits for the justices, and a constitutional amendment called the ‘No One Is Above the Law Amendment’ that would clarify that there would be no immunity for former presidents who committed crimes while in office.
All three reforms are sorely needed to restore public trust in the court, which polls say has eroded. Confidence was damaged by some justices thumbing their noses at the watered-down code of conduct the court recently created. The main culprits, Justice Clarence Thomas, and Justice Samuel Alito, received expensive gifts from friends without reporting them.
Added to that, Thomas refused to recuse himself in the Supreme Court’s 6-3 decision on immunity for the then former President after calls to do so. Thomas’ wife, Virginia “Ginni” Thomas, played a role in trying to reverse the 2020 presidential election in Trump’s favor and her attendance at the rally Trump held on Jan. 6, 2021, shortly before the U.S. Capitol attack. The case Trump v. the United States stemmed from the Jan. 6 insurrection.
Term limits with eventual appointments every two years under a senior judgeship plan would help create balance over the years that reflects ever-changing societal norms and not a 30- or 40-year view of society from an ivory tower. Scholars say it would be unconstitutional to impose limits on the current justices, but instead, we should grandfather in the current ones and impose the limits as soon as such a measure passes.
Source: Seattle Times
