President Biden has proposed three judicial reforms. The Wall Street Journal warned that “it is impossible to overstate how pernicious Mr. Biden’s reform plan is”. Core Constitutional principles such as separation of powers, checks and balances, and judicial independence would be imperiled.
The first proposal would create an external code of ethics to be imposed on the justices. But who would enforce it, and how? The Platonic question echoes: “Who guards the guardians?”
Proposal two claims to redraw more precisely the elusive boundaries of executive authority. But they are delineated already by Article II and numerous court decisions. Impeachment provides an enforcement tool.
Proposal three offers the President new justices for old justices once they serve 18 years. Now students of public management know that we cannot change personnel without changing policy. There is a name for this. It is called “court packing”, and it violates the fundamental principle of judicial independence .
In order to grasp the impact of Biden’s proposals , The Atlantic asked what if Trump, instead of Biden, proposed a plan “to effectively prevent the most experienced justices from being able to make decisions of import on the Court, periodically replacing them with new appointees? The danger to the Constitutional order and the rule of law would be obvious.”
I am Bob Evans and that is my perspective.
