During Biden’s presidency, numerous significant decisions and reform initiatives have emerged.
After four impactful years, President Joe Biden is departing from office, having influenced the Supreme Court in various ways, which raises important questions about his legacy regarding this crucial branch of government.
As the chief executive, Biden possessed the authority to nominate justices and advocate for federal laws in front of the Supreme Court. Early in his administration, he exercised this authority by nominating Ketanji Brown Jackson, marking her as the first Black female justice on the Supreme Court.
This moment represented a historical milestone; however, it also sparked criticism due to his commitment to selecting a nominee based on race and gender. This nomination took place amidst vigorous discussions surrounding meritocracy and the role of race in areas like education.
Throughout Biden’s presidency, U.S. solicitor general Elizabeth Prelogar defended appellate court rulings that supported Harvard’s and the University of North Carolina’s practices of considering race in their admissions processes, commonly known as affirmative action. A
significant ruling from the Supreme Court in 2023 found that both institutions had violated the equal protection clause.
Under Biden’s watch, Prelogar also attempted to defend two pivotal precedents—Roe v. Wade and Chevron v. Natural Resources Defense Council—cases that concluded with transformative outcomes for abortion rights and administrative law.
These cases intensified calls from Democrats for reform. In July of the previous year, Biden introduced proposals aimed at substantial changes to the court. In an op-ed for The Washington Post, he leveraged the court’s decision in Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health to accuse the justices of issuing “dangerous and extreme decisions that overturn settled legal precedents.”
One of the most significant encounters Biden had with the Supreme Court arose from his attempt to forgive $430 billion in student debt. In the 2023 case of
Biden v. Nebraska, Chief Justice John Roberts noted that the administration had engaged in an “exhaustive rewriting” of federal law to facilitate its debt relief efforts.
The court also reinforced the major questions doctrine, which instructs courts to presume that Congress does not delegate substantial economic and political policy decisions to agencies, according to the Yale Law Journal.
Although the Biden administration faced setbacks in these cases as well as in regards to administrative law judges, it also experienced victories. The Supreme Court, for example,
dismissed a lawsuit questioning the Food and Drug Administration’s (FDA) approval of mifepristone, utilized in medical abortions, and another concerning how administration officials influenced social media companies regarding COVID-19 content moderation. In both instances, the Supreme Court
determined that the plaintiffs lacked standing.
In his calls for reform, Biden stated that the Supreme Court is “mired in a crisis of ethics.” Referencing “undisclosed gifts” and “conflicts of interest linked to Jan. 6 insurrectionists,” he appeared to highlight gifts received by Justices Clarence Thomas and Samuel Alito, as well as the upside-down flag displayed outside of Alito’s residence after the events of January 6, 2021. He advocated for term limits and a binding code of ethics, labeling the court’s ethics
code, implemented in November 2023, as “weak and self-enforced.”
Additionally, in pursuit of term limits and ethics reform, Biden proposed a constitutional amendment titled “No One Is Above the Law Amendment,” aiming to counteract the Supreme Court’s determination that the Constitution provides certain levels of immunity to presidents against criminal charges.
The court’s
ruling concerning presidential immunity was issued in response to an appeal made by President-elect Donald Trump regarding an election interference case initiated by former special counsel Jack Smith, who was part of Biden’s Justice Department.
Furthermore, a majority of the Supreme Court overturned the Justice Department’s stance on an obstruction charge related to January 6 defendants, siding with defendant Joseph Fischer in
Fischer v. United States.
