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President Joe Biden wants to shake up the Supreme Court by establishing term limits and ethics codes, and challenging presidential immunity rulings. Sen. Susan Collins says term limits would weaken the independence of the judiciary even though in 1996 she was seemingly for congressional term limits, pledging she would only run for two terms. She has said less on ethics reform and presidential immunity.
A popular, bipartisan SCOTUS term limits idea is to have justices serve for 18 years, staggering vacancies so that an opening comes every two years. This would mean that every presidential term two justices would be appointed. This could stop the political gaming that happened in the nominations of Justices Brett Kavanagh and Amy Coney Barrett. I think that clearly weakened the independence of the judiciary.
Clarence Thomas and others have been receiving gifts from conservative mega donors and then voting to make Donald Trump look great. Susan Collins doesn’t say much. Doesn’t that weaken the independence of the judiciary?
I wish I trusted that all of the justices examined and debated law. I don’t. I see the conservative judges deciding on giving the advantage to Donald Trump. Now Trump apparently can move forward without fear of prosecution in his remaining indictments and he gets to woo his Christian evangelicals with claims he got rid of Roe.
Perhaps Susan Collins is not paying attention to the chaos in the Supreme Court. I see it clearly. That she apparently can’t is deeply concerning. And that weakens the independence of the judiciary.
Jo Trafford
Portland
