The U.S. Supreme Court (Photo by David Lat).
Will we be seeing more Supreme Court justices? Staggered term limits? Mandatory retirement ages? Well, we’ll see soon enough, with Joe Biden making good on his campaign pledge to establish a commission to study various proposals for reforming the increasingly broken institution of the Supreme Court.
In an announcement this morning, the administration outlined a pending Executive Order setting up the reform committee. Zoe Tillman posted a copy of the announcement, included below, but the thrust of the group’s 180-day mission will be:
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The topics it will examine include the genesis of the reform debate; the Court’s role in the Constitutional system; the length of service and turnover of justices on the Court; the membership and size of the Court; and the Court’s case selection, rules, and practices.
NYU School of Law’s Bob Bauer and Yale Law School’s Cristina Rodríguez will chair the effort to be “comprised of a bipartisan group of experts on the Court and Court reform debate.” Before people get too excited, remember that there’s exactly zero chance that anything coming out of this commission will get beyond the unreformed Senate filibuster — assuming anything gets out of this commission at all. The “bipartisan” in the description of the commission all but guarantees a random assortment of FedSoc dweebs will show up and nix any remotely meaningful suggestion based on the unassailable logic that it might have peeved some slaveholder in the 18th century and therefore cannot possibly have merit in a 21st century world power. (UPDATE: National Law Journal has the full membership of the commission here. There were a couple of eyerolls.)
It’s not like Court reform proposals are mysteries. Every halfway plausible reform is the subject of mounds of academic debate already. The country doesn’t need a commission, it needs to pick a lane and just do it. Appointing a commission is the pinnacle of politician cop out.
And it’s a curious cop out to boot. Because Mitch McConnell has already successfully pegged any talk of reform as evil court packing and the caricature of reform may well have cost the Democrats key Senate races in November, making the Georgia run-offs a make or break proposition for the Dems. If you’re going to be tagged with a radical proposal either way, just lean into it and then make staggered term limits — a broadly popular proposal in the country — your compromise position.
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Instead we’re going to get some lackluster report in six months that will result in nothing.
I guess we’re going to have a national discussion about it, which is something. Maybe it’ll highlight for the country how vapid the arguments against reform really are. I guess I’ll try to be optimistic.
Earlier: Joe Biden Offers The Dumbest Possible Solution To Court Reform
Joe Patrice is a senior editor at Above the Law and co-host of Thinking Like A Lawyer. Feel free to email any tips, questions, or comments. Follow him on Twitter if you’re interested in law, politics, and a healthy dose of college sports news. Joe also serves as a Managing Director at RPN Executive Search.