Sens. Joe Manchin of West Virginia and Peter Welch of Vermont introduced a constitutional amendment last Thursday that would create 18-year term limits on the Supreme Court.
Yes, that Joe Manchin—the Democrat-turned-independent who wants President Joe Biden to pardon Donald Trump to heal the nation and has accused both sides of being too partisan and extolled the virtues of the filibuster even as Republicans used it to thwart his party’s agenda—thinks the Supreme Court is so broken that it needs reforming.
“The current lifetime appointment structure is broken and fuels polarizing confirmation battles and political posturing that has eroded public confidence in the highest court in our land,” Manchin said in a statement. "Our amendment maintains that there shall never be more than nine Justices and would gradually create regular vacancies on the Court, allowing the President to appoint a new Justice every two years with the advice and consent of the United States Senate."
The 18-year term limit is the same number of years Biden said Supreme Court justices should be limited to.
Trust in the Supreme Court is at a historic low.
A poll conducted in July and August from the Annenberg Public Policy Center found that trust in the Supreme Court is at the lowest level since it started surveying the issue in 2005.
"More than half of Americans (56%) now disapprove of the Supreme Court, saying they trust it either 'a little' or 'not at all' to act in the best interest of ‘people like you,’" the poll found. What's more, 71% of Americans support a mandatory retirement age on the court, with 68% supporting term limits.
Trust in the court—one-third of which Trump appointed—has plummeted as it’s done terrible things, such as giving Trump immunity for illegal actions he took while president, paved the way for GOP-controlled states to rip away abortion rights from millions of women, gutted the Voting Rights Act, allowed rampant partisan gerrymandering, and stripped power from executive agencies.
Manchin’s bill would have a gradual impact.
None of the current justices would be subject to the 18-year term limit. It would affect only future justices who take the bench. But eventually, it would make it such that an opening on the Supreme Court would occur roughly every two years, The Washington Post reported.
However, there's almost no chance this particular legislation will be enacted.
First, Manchin is retiring at the end of this congressional session, so he won’t be able to see it through.
And second, it's a constitutional amendment, which requires the majority vote of two-thirds of both the House and Senate, as well as three-fourths of state legislatures to ratify.
In this polarized environment, where Republicans have a majority on the court and will soon benefit from an advantage in the Senate to confirm justices, they have no incentive to create term limits on the court.
It's not the only proposed Supreme Court reform legislation.
Democratic Sen. Ron Wyden of Oregon introduced a bill in September that would expand the Court to 15 justices and prevent the Senate from blocking a vote on a Supreme Court nominee, like Sen. Mitch McConnell did to now-outgoing Attorney General Merrick Garland in 2016.
No comments:
Post a Comment