For many liberals, the state’s court system has reached a crisis point. For President Donald Trump and Senator Mitch McConnell, judicial reform was a top priority during Trump’s term – and it was largely successful.
The coup took place in September last year when Judge Ruth Bader Ginsburg passed away and Trump replaced her, a few days before the general election, by the strongly conservative Amy Coney Barrett. It was the third appointment of Trump’s term of four years, and it was confirmed by a Conservative majority, now 6 to 3, in court.
But today, President Biden issued an executive order to set up a commission to study the status of the Supreme Court, with a view to making serious changes, including expanding the number of judges.
The idea of increasing the membership of the Supreme Court – and then “packing” it with more ideological judges – became an important theme on the campaign for the first time in recent memory last year. A number of candidates, including Kamala Harris, now the vice-president, and Pete Buttigieg, now the secretary of transport, said at the time that they would be willing to increase the number of judges. Biden did not express the idea, although he was careful not to rule it out.
Instead, he promised to set up a commission to study possible changes to the court – a promise he made today. The executive order states that the commission will undertake a 180-day study, culminating in a report to the president; the group consists of ‘constitutional scholars, retired members of the federal judiciary’ and others with ‘knowledge of the federal judiciary and the Supreme Court’.
The order outlines a number of possible steps the commission will consider and analyze, including expanding the size of the court and setting time limits.
Both of these proposals have been put forward by progressives as a possible way to guarantee a greater ideological balance in court. Shortly after Ginsburg’s death, California Representative Ro Khanna, one of the left – wing members of Congress, introduced the Supreme Court’s Term Limitations and Regular Appointments Act, which would ensure that all presidents have the opportunity to appoint judges. . Dozens of lawyers signed a letter endorsing the proposal, although it did not progress to a committee vote.
Some of those who signed the letter were nominated in the commission of 36 persons; its membership slanted to the left, but also includes conservative scholars affiliated with groups such as the Federalist Society and the American Enterprise Institute.
The chairmen of the commission will be Bob Bauer, White House attorney under President Barack Obama, and Cristina Rodríguez, a professor at Yale Law School who was Obama’s deputy assistant attorney general in the legal adviser’s office.
“To ensure that the commission’s report is comprehensive and informed by a diverse spectrum of views, it will hold public meetings to hear the views of other experts and groups and stakeholders with divergent perspectives on the issues it will examine, said the White. House’s press office said in a statement today.
The membership of the court has not expanded since the 19th century, although some presidents have tried to do so. Franklin Delano Roosevelt, whose New Deal legislation was upheld as a prototype for expanding the federal government’s role in Biden’s American life, attempted to sue the court in the 1930s with a law that would allow presidents to a new justice for every member of the court older than 70 years. It was never passed.
The debate over the extension of the court resonated today with the parallel discussions being held on whether the filibuster should be called; both drew a line through the Democratic Party, forcing the choice to maintain procedural tradition and advance progressive goals.
Judge Stephen Breyer, who at 82 is by far the oldest member of the court’s liberal wing, tried this week to put a damper on calls for wholesale reform. “Those whose initial instincts can favor important structural (or other similar institutional) changes, such as the form of ‘court packaging’, ‘he said, should, according to the prepared text, think long before embodying the legislative amendments. of a speech he gave Tuesday via video at Harvard Law School, his alma mater.
Regardless of how he feels about the court package, liberal proponents of the court overhaul say Breyer can do immediately to help their case: promise to retire at the end of the current term and let Biden choose his successor. From today, the law firm Demand Justice will drive a billboard truck in downtown Washington, including the blocks near the Supreme Court, with the message: ‘Breyer, retire. It’s time for a Supreme Court justice in the Black Woman. There is no time to waste. ”
New York Times Podcasts
The Ezra Klein show: why 2021 is not 2009
In today’s episode, Brian Deese, the director of the National Economic Council and a former Obama administration official, joined Ezra.
They talked about how Deese’s economic policy and thinking have changed since 2009, what the Biden government has learned from the successes and failures of the Obama era, why so much of the White House’s economic policy has been drawn up in terms of competition with China , why he does not think a carbon tax is the right answer for climate, how the Biden administration will invest in the care economy and more.
You can listen here and read a transcript here.
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