By: Andrew Restuccia – wsj.com – July 1, 2023

Progressives responded to this week’s sweeping Supreme Court decisions with a clear message: It is time to reshape the high court.

But Joe Biden isn’t convinced.

The president, a staunch institutionalist, has largely rejected calls from liberals to push for term limits for justices and for expanding the size of the court, warning that doing so could further politicize the judiciary.

That position could put the president, heading into the 2024 election, at odds with young, progressive voters who are deeply critical of the conservative court. But some of Biden’s advisers maintain that the president’s reluctance to embrace the issue could appeal to the moderate voters he needs if he wants to win re-election.

Young voters turned out in high numbers in the midterm elections, helping to stave off the deep losses for Democrats that some pollsters predicted. But there are signs that those same voters are reacting to 80-year-old Biden’s decision to run for re-election with apathy—in part because of his age—and wish they had other choices.

“The voters that are coming of age politically now have only known a court that has been completely politicized,” said Brian Fallon, the executive director of Demand Justice, which advocates for sweeping changes to the Supreme Court. “They do not think of the court in the gauzy terms that people of Joe Biden’s vintage do.”

Over the course of just two days, the Supreme Court upended affirmative action, found web designers and other creative businesses have a First Amendment right to refuse work for same-sex weddings and overturned a Biden administration program that would have slashed student-loan debt for tens of millions of Americans.

The rulings, widely expected, drew praise from Republicans and shook the Democratic establishment—though progressives were pleased that Biden said he would try to revive his student-debt plan via a different legal path. The rulings also renewed longstanding calls from liberals to redefine the way the court has operated for more than 100 years, with some making the case that it is long past time for Biden to embrace the issue.

“President Biden should run on term limits in 2024. If he does, it will perhaps wake the court up so that they stop showing contempt for American public sentiment,” said Rep. Ro Khanna (D., Calif.), who has proposed legislation that would establish an 18-year term limit for future Supreme Court justices. He argued that the current court majority is “dominated by stubborn, old, extremist jurists who have contempt and little understanding for modern American life.”

Several Democrats, including Sen. Elizabeth Warren of Massachusetts and the Congressional Progressive Caucus, have pushed legislation to remake the Supreme Court. In recent months, other powerful groups on the left, including Planned Parenthood, have endorsed the effort.

Republicans have steadfastly opposed expanding the court. Sen. Ted Cruz (R., Texas) has offered a constitutional amendment that would lock in the current size of nine justices.

Democrats’ goal for the court, Cruz said earlier this year, “is to pack it with liberals who will rule the way they want. The Supreme Court should be independent, not inflated by every new administration.”

The court has existed in its current form, consisting of nine justices, since 1869. Before that, the composition changed several times. In 1937, President Franklin Roosevelt proposed adding justices to a conservative Supreme Court that had thwarted many of his New Deal initiatives. The so-called court-packing plan failed in Congress.

Public confidence in the Supreme Court has declined, driven in large part by the unpopularity of its ruling last year overturning a constitutional right to abortion. Some 31% of voters held a positive view of the high court in an NBC News poll released this week, a record low since the poll first asked about the court in 1992 and significantly below the 50% with a positive view in 2018. Some 40% in the new survey had a negative view of the court.

Some polls have found support for term limits for Supreme Court justices, but opinion on adding additional justices to the court has been divided. About two-thirds of Americans favored term limits or a mandatory retirement age for the justices in an Associated Press-NORC poll last July, taken just weeks after the high court’s ruling on abortion.

But Biden hasn’t budged in his reluctance to support changes at the court.

In an interview this week with MSNBC, Biden said the nation’s high court had done “more to unravel basic rights and basic decisions” than any Supreme Court in recent history. But he added, “If we start the process of trying to expand the court, we’re going to politicize it, maybe forever, in a way that is not healthy.”

The White House has also declined to say whether Biden would support a code of ethics for the Supreme Court, a measure that some Democrats have proposed after reports of some justices failing to disclose gifts from wealthy benefactors.

Biden appointed a bipartisan commission to study possible measures to change the court. The commission’s final report didn’t produce any formal recommendations, and the president has largely avoided commenting on the panel’s work.

Even if Biden endorsed a reimagining of the court, it could take years to build the political momentum necessary to impose term limits or add more justices, supporters of the effort say.

Activists think Biden will shift on the issue over time, noting that it took the president years to change his position on the Senate’s filibuster rules. Under pressure from Democrats furious about the Supreme Court’s abortion ruling, the president last year endorsed making an exception to filibuster rules to pass legislation codifying Roe v. Wade into law.

“He’s probably going to be the last domino to fall,” said Fallon of Demand Justice. “He’s an institutionalist at heart, and he’s not going to be somebody who is quick to acknowledge the loss of legitimacy that the court has suffered.”

Aaron Zitner contributed to this article.

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Source: Biden’s Base Wants Supreme Court Reform. He Doesn’t. – WSJ