Joe Biden’s first step toward reforming the Supreme Court

(Washington) Joe Biden a entrouvert vendredi la porte à une possible réforme de la Cour suprême, s’attirant l’ire des républicains qui l’accusent de vouloir attaquer cette puissante institution, responsable aux États-Unis de trancher plus les grandes questions de association.

Elodie Cuisine
France Media

The US President signed an Executive Order to form a committee of experts to reform the Temple of American Law, which has been firmly entrenched on the conservative side since the appointments of Donald Trump.

The committee will be made up of Democratic and Republican experts and will study the most sensitive aspects of a potential Supreme Court reform: the terms of office of its members, their number, the way the institution chooses the cases it rules over, its rules and its practices.

She will have six months to present her recommendations.

The attempt to “radicalize the Supreme Court” and “direct attack” on justice: its creation sparked intense criticism among Republicans.

The Supreme Court, which decides many social issues in the United States such as access to abortion or the rights of sexual minorities, has nine judges appointed for life. They are appointed by the President of the United States and must be approved by the Senate.

It currently has six conservative judges, three of whom were appointed by former Republican President Donald Trump.

The committee set up by Joe Biden will be chaired by Bob Bauer and Christina Rodriguez, both distinguished law professors. Bob Bauer had advised Joe Biden during his campaign.

Left Far Effect

During the presidential campaign, candidates for the Democratic Party primaries raised the possibility of increasing the number of judges on the court. A hypothesis angering Republicans.

Candidate Biden told him he did not support this idea. They even considered this idea “stupid” in the early 1980s.

Asked about this, White House spokeswoman Jane Baskey replied on Friday that he had “asked his team to create this committee to reflect the diversity of viewpoints.”

“This, of course, will have an impact on his opinion,” she added at a news conference.

For Republican Senator Mitch McConnell, the announcement of the commission’s creation, “a pseudo-academic study of a problem that does not exist,” represents a “direct attack on our country’s independent judicial system.”

In a scathing statement, he said on Friday that he saw “a new sign of the influence of the far left on the Biden administration”.

“Briar, quit.”

With three controversial appointments each for distinct reasons, calls from the progressive camp to reform the esteemed institution have become more vicious under Donald Trump.

As a blow to the Democrats, progressive and feminist icon Ruth Bader Ginsburg, who died less than two months before the 2020 presidential election, was replaced by conservative judge Amy Connie Barrett, 49.

Given the age of the new Conservative recruits, his arrival has cemented the court on the right for decades.

Before that, the Republican billionaire had appointed conservative Brett Kavanaugh, 56, to replace Anthony Kennedy, a conservative on certain issues but an advocate of more progressive positions on other points, such as gay rights.

The 2018 hearings of the judge, who was accused of sexual assault before being confirmed by the Senate, led to a deep split in the country.

Once at the White House, Donald Trump appointed a third judge: Neil Gorsuch, 53, who replaced the conservative Antonin Scalia, who had died nearly a year earlier.

Fearing that the same Ruth Bader Ginsburg story will be repeated if Joe Biden is replaced by a Republican after the 2024 presidential election, a group advocating for Supreme Court reform has pushed the most progressive judge, Stephen Breyer, 82, to resign now.

“Briar, quit. It is time for a black woman to sit in the Supreme Court,” read a truck driving in Washington on Friday.

Tuesday, “Judge Breyer” warned against the idea of ​​increasing the number of judges in the Supreme Court, saying that reforms perceived as political could weaken Americans’ confidence in the institution.