Justice Neil Gorsuch responded negatively to a proposal from President Joe Biden to change the structure of the Supreme Court through term limits and a code of personal conduct.

Biden recently suggested imposing eighteen-year term limits for members of the Supreme Court, allowing the commander-in-chief to appoint a new justice every two years, as well as imposing ethics codes that more strictly regulate purported conflicts of interest. The current Supreme Court, which maintains a conservative majority, has overturned abortion decisions, curtailed the administrative state, and otherwise opposed progressive policy priorities.

Gorsuch remarked in an interview that he would not “get into what’s now a political issue during a presidential election year” but cautioned about the importance of a Supreme Court insulated from political pressures, asking proponents of the new proposal to “be careful.”

“The independent judiciary: what does it mean to you as an American? It means that when you are unpopular, you can get a fair hearing under the law and under the Constitution,” Gorsuch contended. “If you are 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 is 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?”

The new reform proposal from Biden comes after Democratic lawmakers alleged that Justice Clarence Thomas and Justice Samuel Alito, two of the most conservative members of the current Supreme Court, have violated ethics standards on multiple occasions.

Democratic members of the Senate have supported at least one element of the proposal by introducing legislation making clear that “presidents do not have immunity for criminal actions,” a response to the Supreme Court ruling earlier this summer on behalf of former President Donald Trump by concluding that presidents have immunity for certain official acts.

House Speaker Mike Johnson, a Republican from Louisiana, meanwhile announced that the proposal to “radically overhaul” the Supreme Court would be “dead on arrival” in the House of Representatives. He asserted that the move would “tilt the balance of power and erode not only the rule of law, but the American people’s faith in our system of justice.”