Biden forms commission to study possibility of expanding Supreme Court
President Biden announced Friday that he’s forming a special commission to study the possibility of adding seats to the Supreme Court and placing term limits on justices — a move that drew praise from progressives and outrage from conservatives.
The commission, which Biden is establishing via executive authority, will comprise a bipartisan group of 36 legal scholars and former federal judges, according to a White House statement.
Co-chaired by New York University scholar Bob Bauer and former Deputy Assistant Attorney General Christina Rodriguez, the commission will be tasked with holding public hearings and crafting a report providing “analysis of the principal arguments” for and against Supreme Court reform, the White House said. The commission must complete the report within 180 days of its first public meeting.
“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,” the White House said.
The Supreme Court currently has three liberal justices and six conservative-leaning ones, three of them appointed by former President Donald Trump.
Democrats — furious by then-Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell’s rush to seat Justice Amy Coney Barrett before last year’s presidential election after Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg’s death — have pushed for evening out the political balance of the court by adding as many as four new seats to it.
Supreme Court reform would require congressional action, and the White House stressed that Biden isn’t making a recommendation one way or the other as to whether the Supreme Court should be expanded.
But progressive Democrats read between the lines of Biden’s announcement.
“President Biden has spoken clearly: The question is no longer if we will reform the Supreme Court, but how we will reform the Supreme Court,” said New York Rep. Mondaire Jones, a freshman Democrat on the House Judiciary Committee. “The answer to that question is equally clear: to restore our democracy, we must expand the Supreme Court. Anything less would leave the future of our nation, our planet, and our fundamental civil rights at the whim of a far-right supermajority that is hostile to democracy itself.”
Republicans, concerned about losing conservative influence, also interpreted Biden’s commission announcement as a foregone conclusion for expanding the top court.
“This is not some new, serious or sober pivot away from Democrats’ political attacks on the Court. It’s just an attempt to clothe those ongoing attacks in fake legitimacy,” said McConnell, now the Senate’s Republican minority leader. “It’s disappointing that anyone, liberal or conservative, would lend credence to this attack by participating in the commission.”
Despite the GOP pushback, the makeup of the Supreme Court has been reformed before, under both Republican and Democratic presidents.
In its inception, the top court only had six justices. Congress bumped that number to seven in 1807 before raising it again to nine in 1837. In 1863, Congress increased the number to 10 before shrinking it back to seven in 1866 before finally returning to nine in 1869, where it has stood since.
The Supreme Court has long been crucial in U.S. politics and governance.
But progressives say the court is especially important today, as it could eventually be asked to weigh in on Biden’s push for sweeping reform on a range of issues, such as gun rights, immigration, health care and climate change.
