Elizabeth Warren Claims Supreme Court Is ‘Actively Undermining Our Democracy,’ Pushes for Reform

Senator Elizabeth Warren (D., Mass) called for Supreme Court reform on Sunday, including term-limits and Court-packing, as she claimed the current Court is “actively undermining” democracy.

Warren’s comments during an appearance on CNN’s State of the Union come after President Biden similarly said in recent days that he hopes to pursue reforms to the high court in his final six months in office, calling it an effort that is “critical to our Democracy.” 

“Here’s a man who has been a transformative president. He’s gotten an enormous amount done, and yet, he has stepped away and he has passed the torch to Kamala Harris,” Warren said. “Why has he done that? He’s done it as an act of patriotism for our nation. And he is saying we not only have to have a president who is here for the nation and who will heal us and bring us together, we also have to change our Supreme Court.”

“Because right now, we have a Supreme Court that has basically jumped the guard rails and is out there giving power to the president, saying that the President can commit any act that the President wants, saying that Congress cannot authorize agencies to act. So we’ve got a Supreme Court that is actively undermining our democracy,” she added, apparently referring to the Court’s ruling that former president Donald Trump has absolute immunity from criminal prosecution for actions within his conclusive and preclusive constitutional authority; and immunity, whether absolute or presumptive, for his other official actions.

“And I think what Joe Biden will do over the next six months, is he’s going to keep drawing that to the attention of the American people and reminding them when they vote in November, the Supreme Court is on the ballot. And that is a good reason to vote for Kamala Harris and to vote for Democrats in both the Senate and the House,” she said.

Biden is reportedly considering proposals to enforce term limits for Supreme Court justices and to create an enforceable ethics code.

A commission formed by Biden to study potential reforms to the U.S. Supreme Court voted unanimously in 2021 to approve a final report that took “no position” on Court-packing.

The panel, which Biden formed to study Court expansion and reform, authored a nearly 300-page report that offered arguments for and against Court-packing, judicial term limits and other matters related to the high Court, but did not provide any recommendations.

“Given the size and nature of the Commission and the complexity of the issues addressed, individual members of the Commission would have written the Report with different emphases and approaches,” the report’s summary said. “But the Commission submits this Report today in the belief that it represents a fair and constructive treatment of the complex and often highly controversial issues it was charged with examining.”

The report said that “no serious person, in either major political party, suggests court packing as a means of overturning disliked Supreme Court decisions, whether the decision in question is Roe v. Wade or Citizens United.”

“Scholars could say, until very recently, that even as compared to other court reform efforts, ‘court-packing’ is especially out of bounds,” it read. “This is part of the convention of judicial independence.”

However, it added that the commission “takes no position on the validity or strength of these claims.”

“Mirroring the broader public debate, there is profound disagreement among commissioners on these issues,” the report said. “We present the arguments in order to fulfill our charge to provide a complete account of the contemporary court reform debate.”

The final report followed the release of draft materials detailing the panel’s discussions in which the commission warned that expanding the number of justices on the Court would be seen as a “partisan maneuver.”

The panel also weighed term limits for justices, who currently have life tenure. The average term for a Supreme Court justice today is about 26 years, according to the Washington Post. The commission discussed a proposal to stagger 18-year terms to ensure that all presidents have the opportunity to nominate two justices in each term they serve.

While it takes no position on the proposal, the report noted that a group of Supreme Court practitioners concluded that an 18-year nonrenewable term “warrants serious consideration.”