Rubio: Save the Supreme Court From Biden's 'Reforms'

 Less than 24 hours after a gunman shot Donald Trump, murdered a husband and father, and seriously injured two more people, President Joe Biden told Americans: "Unity is the most elusive goal of all, but nothing is more important than that right now." I couldn't agree more, which is why I urge the outgoing president not to attack one of America's most important institutions: the Supreme Court.

On July 16, the Washington Post reported that Biden plans to endorse restructuring the Court through term limits and a so-called ethics code. Biden confirmed these rumors on July 29, when he announced his intention to "reform the Supreme Court." Such "reform" would be the first of its kind and require amending the U.S. Constitution. In turn, placing the Court further under the control of the president and Congress would threaten one of the Founding Fathers' bedrock principles: the separation of powers.

As these changes would force a major break from national precedent, one would hope that Biden plans to endorse them for a good reason, a reason that all Americans can agree on. Instead, his motives are stirred by party politics. Don't take my word for it; take the word of Laurence Tribe, the left-wing law professor whose advice Biden sought when crafting his upcoming proposal. "There is a compelling need for supreme court reform," per Tribe, "including a plan to impose an enforceable ethics code and terms limits and possibly create several added seats," because the current Court is an "imperial judiciary" that favors Donald Trump's "Maga agenda."

Never mind that the Court disappoints the Right as often as it disappoints the Left. Never mind the unanimity of the decision to keep Trump on the Colorado ballot. Never mind the lopsided decision preserving access to chemical abortion pills. Never mind any of that; because Trump's appointees helped overturn Roe v. Wade and (only partially) concurred with a ruling on presidential immunity, the liberal establishment is revving to rewrite the rules.

Of course, this isn't the first time high-ranking Democrats have proposed reshaping the Court because they didn't like the composition of the Justices. In early 2019, then-presidential candidate Kamala Harris expressed what Politico described as "surprising openness" to the body's expansion. "We are on the verge of a crisis of confidence in the Supreme Court," she said. "We have to take this challenge head on, and everything is on the table to do that." Apparently, "everything" included court-packing.

In the wake of Harris' comments, I introduced a constitutional amendment to limit the Supreme Court to nine Justices, the number set out in law since 1869. I said Congress had a duty to "prevent the delegitimizing of the Supreme Court" because "Our institutions matter. Our Constitution matters. And we should fight to protect them." And I was not alone. Biden, at that time, expressed more caution than his left-wing competitor. "No, I'm not prepared to go on and try to pack the court, because we'll live to rue that day," he told a local Iowa outlet. "We [will] begin to lose any credibility the court has at all," he added in a debate later that fall.

Biden was right, because the whole point of the independent judiciary is to stand above the partisan fray and the whims of the moment. This is why I call the Supreme Court America's greatest unifying institution. It's the government body most explicitly committed to the one thing we all have in common: transcendent, self-evident truth, as embodied by our founding documents. Biden's new plans for the Court, by contrast, would make the judiciary more political, not less, and would undermine everything it stands for.

A lot has changed since 2019. But the imperative to preserve the Supreme Court's integrity, and the integrity of the republic for which it stands, has not changed one bit. Today, I call on the president, once again, to honor his own call for unity, remember his past words, and secure his legacy by protecting one of our most vital institutions.

https://www.newsweek.com/rubio-save-supreme-court-bidens-reforms-opinion-1931461