If reports are correct, President Joe Biden would contradict the Constitution itself in order supposedly to save the Constitution from a rogue Supreme Court. He better not even try.

At issue are multiple media reports that Biden plans to propose a package of “reforms” related to the high court. Just about every report says one of the main reforms would be “legislation” to impose term limits on justices. The problem isn’t necessarily with the idea of some sort of term limit. The problem is that no term limit can be imposed on federal judges through ordinary legislation. If Biden really will propose term-limit legislation rather than a constitutional amendment, he is not just wasting everybody’s time but insulting our intelligence.

This isn’t even debatable. This is not a matter of opinion or interpretation. There is no remotely legitimate or defensible interpretation of the Constitution that would allow term limits unless the Constitution itself is amended.

The second sentence of Article 3 of the Constitution begins thusly: “The Judges, both of the supreme and inferior Courts, shall hold their Offices during good Behaviour.” By “good behavior,” it means they absolutely cannot be involuntarily replaced unless they commit a transgression serious enough to earn impeachment from the House and removal by a two-thirds vote of the Senate. There is no wiggle room in the Constitution: Absent major transgressions, these are appointments for life or until the judges willingly retire. And the appointments pertain not just to their salaries but to their powers.

The point is to insulate judges from transitory politics. That insulation should not be, and is not, removable through the sort of transitory politics that ordinary legislation represents.

Nonetheless, eight leftist senators have introduced a bill to make an end run around the Constitution by a complicated sleight of hand. They would create more than nine slots on the Supreme Court and then allow only the nine most recently appointed justices to rule on all but an extremely narrow subset of cases defined by a different constitutional clause. Except in cases involving “ambassadors… and consuls” or “those in which a State shall be a party,” the longer-serving justices effectively would be term-limited from active decision-making, even though they technically would keep their titles and paychecks.

Presumably the senators are relying on constitutional text giving Congress the right to make “exceptions” to the court’s jurisdiction and to make “regulations” pertaining thereto. This, though, is nonsense. The Constitution provides for a Supreme Court as a whole, and it says the “court,” not a subset of justices, shall have jurisdiction. It makes absolutely no provision for creating a set of second-tier Supreme Court justices who enjoy less authority than their colleagues. Congress can create “regulations” for some aspects of how the court can operate (such as whether to allow cameras in the courtroom). It cannot, however, decide that one justice appointed for life has less power than another.

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If this legislation is Biden’s model, he shouldn’t insult the public by wasting our time. It would be merely a cynical maneuver, a promise without even the barest chance of becoming reality, to please the Democratic Party’s left wing while politicizing the court for election purposes.

On the other hand, if Biden wants to argue for a constitutional amendment for court term limits, there may be some good arguments in favor. He should not, however, pretend that Congress and the president have the power to enforce term limits without recourse to the people’s will, acting through legislatures in our respective states. No amount of hocus pocus can give Congress authority to do something the Constitution clearly forbids.