Prominent lawyer Alan Dershowitz said Monday that Democrats are pushing “unconstitutional” changes to the Supreme Court after suffering bitter losses in several landmark cases.
President Joe Biden proposed reforms to the Supreme Court in a speech on Monday. Editorial Dershowitz told The Washington Post that reforms such as limiting Supreme Court justices to 18 years are needed to “strengthen the guardrails of our democracy,” citing the Supreme Court's decision in United States v. Trump, which granted the president immunity from prosecution for official acts. Dershowitz disagreed with Biden's argument, saying Biden's concern was instead with the “fact that we lost big cases” at the Supreme Court. (Related: Alan Dershowitz doubts conviction will be overturned because appeals court judges are “afraid” of helping Trump)
“And then you get to the essence of what they really want. They don't care about the structure of the Supreme Court. They don't care about term limits,” Dershowitz said. “What they care about is the fact that they lost at the Supreme Court. They lost Roe v. Wade. That was the beginning of this movement of, 'Let's pack the Supreme Court. Let's move the Supreme Court further to the left.' And, of course, that was the beginning of the recent decision on presidential immunity.”
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In 2022, the Supreme Court overturned the 1973 Roe v. Wade decision, upholding Mississippi's decision to ban most abortions after the 15th week of pregnancy in a 6-3 decision on Friday. That same year, the court also struck down New York state's concealed carry law, which required a “good cause” to be issued for firearms permits outside the home, and ruled that the exclusion of religious schools from government voucher programs was unconstitutional.
In addition to ruling that presidents have immunity from prosecution for their official duties, the Supreme Court's term, which ended July 1, also overturned a provision known as “Chevron deference,” which requires courts to defer to regulators' interpretations of the law, and ruled that fines imposed by administrative law judges violate the Seventh Amendment to the U.S. Constitution. The Supreme Court also ruled that the Department of Justice improperly used the statutory provision to prosecute participants in the January 6, 2021, riot at the Capitol.
Earlier, Dershowitz had accused Biden and Harvard Law professor Laurence Tribe of pursuing a “campaign issue” and said term limits would be struck down as unconstitutional. (Related: 'Fraudulent': Alan Dershowitz reveals how Claudine Gay became Harvard's president)
“You can't have term limits. I'm more in favor of term limits,” Dershowitz said. “If I were to rewrite the Constitution, I would say judges and justices should have terms of 15, 18, 20 years. Ten years is too short, 25 years is too long, somewhere in between, I would support it. I think that makes sense.”
“But there's a specific provision in the Constitution that says judges hold office as long as they remain on good behavior,” Dershowitz continued. “That's the language of the Constitution, and that means until they resign, retire or die. It's been that way since 1793, but the Lawrence clan and their protégé, Biden, think they can change all that by legislation. No, you can't. It has to be changed by constitutional amendment.”
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