Courts

Supreme Court Reform Has 'Considerable Bipartisan Support' And STILL No Chance Of Passing

Good ideas have no shot.

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(Photo by Erin Schaff-Pool/Getty Images)

Joe Biden created a commission to study the idea of possibly, maybe doing something to reform the Supreme Court. Despite being an abject failure from the perspective of actually doing something about the Court’s slide into naked partisanship, the commission did waste a lot of people’s time and energy in a bid to quiet mounting pressure to take action and that’s… a kind of success for Biden.

Still, even if the commission wrapped up with a whimper, it did at least put some key reform ideas on the record. Unsurprisingly, the best reform proposal out there — changing either the Constitution or (easier) the enabling statutes that define the structure of the Supreme Court to impose 18-year staggered terms that give every presidential term two picks — was a hit with legal thinkers of all stripes.

In testimony before the Commission, a bipartisan group of experienced Supreme Court practitioners concluded that an eighteen-year non-renewable term “warrants serious consideration.” Major think tanks and their leaders have also endorsed the concept, as have both liberal and conservative constitutional scholars. When the National Constitution Center organized separate groups of “conservative” scholars and “progressive” scholars to draft their own proposals for improving the Constitution, both groups concluded that Supreme Court Justices should be limited to eighteen-year terms.

It’s a fair solution that would — over the course of a few years — return the Court to a responsive institution as a lagging indicator of the Constitutional view of the electorate. It would be fair to everyone, erase the gameplaying of the nomination process, and avoid the nightmare of continual packing and counter-packing.

But bipartisan support isn’t enough because there are just enough politicians thrilled by the death spiral we’re in. There are Republicans too committed to the Court as a vehicle for their anti-democratic policy goals and Democrats too excited about adding new justices today to worry about what happens when Trump adds 10 in 2024. Getting a term-limit system in place would be a balanced, sensible, and popular conclusion to a growing crisis which is exactly why no one has any appetite for it.

We are, as a country, totally screwed.

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Supreme Court term limits have ‘considerable, bipartisan support,’ SCOTUS commission says [ABA Journal]

Earlier: Joe Biden Announces Supreme Court Reform Commission
Biden’s Committee Is As Effective As Punching Inanimate Objects

HeadshotJoe 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.

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