What Kamala Harris And Joe Biden Have Said About Reforming The Supreme Court

President Joe Biden said he wanted changes to the Supreme Court when he spoke from the Oval Office as part of an address to the nation explaining his decision to drop out of the 2024 presidential race.

“I’m going to call for Supreme Court reform, because this is critical to our democracy,” he said on Wednesday.

The remarks have fueled speculation about what Supreme Court reforms Biden will push for, focusing attention on past remarks on the subject by the president and Vice President Kamala Harris, now the presumptive Democratic 2024 presidential nominee.

Over the past few years, the conservative-leaning Supreme Court has taken a number of decisions that have infuriated progressives. In June 2022 the Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade, the landmark 1973 ruling that concluded abortion access was a constitutional right, leading to a wave of restrictions being passed in Republican states.

In July, the Supreme Court ruled 6-3, along conservative vs liberal lines, that presidents have “absolute immunity” for decisions taken during their time of office which are deemed official acts. This move strengthened Trump’s defense in the federal election interference case in which he has pleaded not guilty to four criminal charges related to alleged efforts to overturn Joe Biden’s 2020 presidential election victory.

According to Politico. President Biden is to outline a series of Supreme Court reforms he’d like to see during a speech on Monday, including term limits for justices, an enforceable ethics code and restrictions on presidential immunity.

Newsweek contacted the White House press office and a representative of Vice President Kamala Harris for comment by email on Saturday outside of regular office hours.

While these plans have virtually no chance of being passed into law before November’s presidential election, due to Republican control of the House and the likelihood some would require constitutional amendment, they would represent a dramatic repudiation of the Supreme Court status quo by the Democratic Party leadership.

In an interview with Cincinnati WKRC shortly before the 2020 presidential election, Biden said he didn’t support calls to expand the Supreme Court, commenting: “I’ve already spoken on—I’m not a fan of court packing, but I don’t want to get off on that whole issue. I want to keep focused.”

By contrast Harris, now the presumptive Democratic presidential nominee, expressed an openness to expanding the Supreme Court prior to the election in 2020.

Speaking to Politico in March 2019, she said: “We are on the verge of a crisis of confidence in the Supreme Court…we have to take this challenge head on, and everything is on the table to do that.”

Two months later Harris was asked at an event in Nashua, New Hampshire, whether she would support adding four new Supreme Court justices to the bench.

According to Bloomberg, she replied: “I’m open to this conversation about increasing the number of people on the United States Supreme Court.”