OPINION: This article may contain commentary which reflects the author's opinion.
U.S. Supreme Court Justice Neil Gorsuch issued a two-word warning to President Joe Biden after he announced last week he wanted to implement several reforms of the nation’s highest court, including blatantly unconstitutional term limits.
During an interview on Fox News Sunday, anchor Shannon Bream spoke about Biden’s reform and asked Gorsuch, “How does the Court feel about potential changes to term limits?”
In response, the justice said he would not “get into what is now a political issue during a presidential election year,” but added these words: “Be careful.”
“I have one thought to add. The independent judiciary…what does it mean to you as an American? It means when you are unpopular, you can get a fair hearing under the law and under the Constitution,” Gorsuch said.
“If you’re in the majority, you don’t need judges and juries to hear you and protect your rights, you’re popular. It’s there for the moments when the spotlight’s on you. When the government’s coming after you. And don’t you want a ferociously independent judge and a jury of your peers to make those decisions? Isn’t that your right as an American? And so I just say be careful,” he added, as reported by Newsweek.
Late last month, Biden unveiled a new three-part plan to reform the Supreme Court. His proposal includes imposing term limits on justices, introducing a constitutional amendment to overturn the Court’s ruling on presidential immunity, and establishing an enforceable ethics code for the justices. Currently, Supreme Court justices, like all federal judges, hold lifetime appointments.
“The United States is the only major constitutional democracy that gives lifetime seats to its high court Justices,” a fact sheet from the White House reads. “Term limits would help ensure that the Court’s membership changes with some regularity; make timing for Court nominations more predictable and less arbitrary; and reduce the chance that any single Presidency imposes undue influence for generations to come.”
Critics of Biden’s plan charge that he and other members of the left-wing Democratic Party only want to change the court’s current 6-3 constitutionalist majority because the justices have issued several rulings in recent years the party opposes. They include upholding the originalist intent of the Second Amendment, returning the issue of abortion to the states where it resided until 1973, and, most recently, overturning the “Chevron Doctrine,” in which courts deferred to federal agencies’ own interpretations of their authority.
Speaking of federal agencies, in another portion of the interview, Gorsuch told Bream that the combined authority of the hundreds of federal agencies—whose rules and regulations have the force of law—has essentially turned them into a fourth branch of government, the subject of a recent book by Gorsuch.
“It’s not just the laws passed but also the regulatory stuff that has given rise to what critics would call a ‘fourth branch of government.’ In the book, you say, ‘Many criminal laws are not the direct product of the elected representatives accountable to us; they’re the handiwork of agency officials… These days, federal agencies don’t just write and enforce legally binding rules. Often, they act as prosecutor and judge too,'” the host said.
Gorsuch dropped one big example.
“The IRS has a hotline if you have questions — you don’t want to become a federal felon — call them. And it turned out, for a period of time, they were giving wrong answers about a third of the time. And then, when asked why there were so many wrong answers, they said, ‘Well, the IRS tax code had just become so complex; there are just so many new laws.’ There has been an explosion in our laws, and it’s new and it is different it is in our lifetimes,” he said.
