A judicial reform is on the horizon. Not here, in Israel, but in America. The Washington Post reported this week that President Joe Biden intends to implement a reform in the U.S. Supreme Court, and he declared this in a conversation with legislators from the Congressional Progressive Caucus.
The steps Biden is currently considering include imposing a term limit on judges, who are currently appointed for life, mandatory conduct rules for Supreme Court justices, and possibly even increasing the number of justices on the Supreme Court. Such a move would allow him to immediately and artificially change the balance between conservatives and progressives in the court.
To Israeli ears, Biden's reform may not sound particularly dramatic. In the United States, where the Supreme Court operates according to a tradition over 200 years old, these steps are revolutionary. Biden himself opposed such initiatives out of concern that they would allow any future president to do as they wish with the Supreme Court. However, two rulings by the American Supreme Court, one recently and the other about two years ago, completely changed the Democratic Party's attitude toward this judicial body, consequently bringing a shift in Biden's personal stance.
The the Roe v. Wade overturn given in June 2022, determined that the Constitution does not protect women's right to abortion, allowing each state in the U.S. to decide whether and how to permit abortions within its territory. The ruling caused a political earthquake, as the left saw it as a result of reactionary forces taking over the Supreme Court and abusing the judicial system to drag the U.S. back decades.
The second, more recent ruling, was issued about two weeks ago and dealt with the extent of immunity that should be granted to the President of the United States. According to the ruling, substantive immunity applies to all actions of the president in their official capacity but does not protect their private actions. The decision was published as part of a legal proceeding against former President and current Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump regarding his role in the January 6, 2021, Capitol riots. The cumulative punishment for the four charges against him is 55 years in prison. In response to the charges, Trump claimed that the actions were carried out while he was president, and therefore he is entitled to immunity from prosecution. The federal appeals court rejected the immunity claim, but the Supreme Court partially accepted Trump's appeal. Now the case will return to the trial court, which will have to decide whether each charge falls under presidential immunity.
Although the full implications of the ruling are not yet clear, among Trump's opponents, it is considered an attack on the democratic principles of the United States. "This nation was founded on the principle that there are no kings in America," President Biden declared immediately after the ruling was issued. "Each of us is equal before the law. No one - no one - is above the law, not even the president of the United States." Politicians and legal experts joined the attack, vehemently criticizing the ruling and marking it as a sign that a reform in the Supreme Court is necessary.
It turns out that the progressive public's traditional support in the U.S. for the judicial system in general, and the Supreme Court in particular, was conditional. These two rulings, along with other rulings in recent years that did not receive much attention, were made by the majority of the six conservative justices on the Supreme Court, some of whom were appointed by Trump himself, versus the three liberal justices. For more than a generation, the liberal wing almost entirely dominated the Supreme Court, and therefore the immense power given to the court seemed completely logical and even desirable to progressives. Any initiative to change the rules of the game was considered heresy. Once the balance shifted and the conservative majority in the court became solidified, the institution lost favor in the eyes of progressives. Today, calls for judicial reform have become mainstream among them.
Biden's chances of succeeding in initiating such a reform before the elections are slim to none, given that the Republicans hold a majority, even if small, in the House of Representatives. But merely bringing the issue to the forefront and likely positioning it as a key point in Biden's election campaign is very important. Any comparison to what is happening in Israel is at your own risk.
