Legal analysts weigh in as Biden pushes for Supreme Court reforms, term limits

WASHINGTON - Should U.S. Supreme Court justices have term limits? 

Right now, the job is a lifetime appointment, but Monday morning, President Joe Biden announced a new proposal to radically change how the high court operates. 

Legal analysts on both sides are considering what the rationale for these changes is. 

Biden had resisted previous efforts to reshape the court like increasing the number of justices but now, the president appears to be reacting to recent rulings that Democrats are not happy about and recent headlines about how the court itself operates.

In the Monday op-ed, the president called for an 18-year term limit for justices. He also called for strict new ethics rules for justices following recent headlines over justices accepting gifts, and the president wants a constitutional amendment to limit legal immunity for the president’s official acts, which the court recently upheld. 

Speaking from Austin, Texas Monday afternoon, Biden said the three-part proposal will bring much-needed reforms.

RELATED: Biden unveils plan for Supreme Court reforms, including term limits

"We’ve had term limits for the president of the United States for 75 years after the Truman administration and I believe that we should have term limits for Supreme Court justices of the United States as well," Biden said. 

Progressive legal analysts say the reforms are long overdue.

"This Supreme Court has done something entirely different by stripping away individual rights, and voting rights, the right to choose things along those lines, so I think this court is inherently more political!" Devon Ombres with the Center for American Progress.

 But conservatives say the president is playing politics, looking to boost Democrats’ chances this November. 

"He’s never called for any of these reforms but he calls for them 99 days before the Presidential Election when he knows that the democratic base is very very unhappy with the Republican appointees on the Supreme Court," said John Malcolm with the conservative think tank The Heritage Foundation. 

 One thing both conservatives and progressives agree on is that this would be a heavy lift to put into place. 

For any of Biden’s Supreme Court proposals to take effect, they would have to be passed by both houses of Congress. A constitutional amendment would be even tougher to achieve and would need to be ratified by three-fourths of the states.