No other country in the world operates as we do. It’s time.

Are We Finally Letting Go of Our Learned-Helplessness Syndrome Around the Supreme Court?

On Tuesday evening, news broke that the Biden administration is planning to support several proposals for structural Supreme Court reforms that may include legislation to create enforceable ethics rules for the nine sitting justices as well as term limits. The same unnamed sources floated the possibility that Biden, in consultation with high-profile constitutional scholars, was also considering whether to call for a constitutional amendment to eliminate the broad immunity a Supreme Court decision earlier this month conferred on presidents. Early Democratic reactions to the as yet largely speculative reporting have ranged from the tepid “Better late than never” to the lukewarm “Good luck with the whole DeLorean thing because these reforms were desperately needed back in 2016.” (I confess that the DeLorean reaction was mine.) Also, you would need the presidency, a filibuster-proof majority in the Senate, plus the House to make these dreams come true. (Democrats do not have all three.) And reforming the Supreme Court such that it cannot, say, immunize a president who commits crimes while in office feels as if it would have been a better idea before the court immunized the president who commits crimes in office.

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