SUPREME COMMISSION: PROGRESSIVES MAY NOT BE CONTENT

Unhappy with the way things have gone for their side when it comes to the United States Supreme Court — and in 2016, they had a point — Americans of the progressive stripe wanted to upend the whole card table. They might have unwittingly taken a page from the old Eisenhower playbook: If you can’t solve a problem, enlarge it. Sometimes help comes a-running.

In April, President Biden gave them what they wanted — at least what they wanted then: a commission to study changes to the Supreme Court. Certainly their wants and desires will broaden, and this commission was, in their eyes, just a first step.

But word is leaking out that this highly academic group, and perhaps its highly academic exercise, might not go the way the true believers would prefer. Apparently the commission didn’t endorse or reject specific arguments such as court-packing or term limits for justices. White House press secretary Jen Psaki “characterized the draft as an assessment rather than a list of recommendations,” according to CBS News.

As far as adding seats to the U.S. Supreme Court, the committee “cast doubts.”

On term limits, the commission said such an idea might help balance judicial independence with the “long-term responsiveness of the judiciary to the people.”

As you can imagine, the small steps and iffy language used by the commission isn’t sitting well in some quarters.

“You wouldn’t have a climate change commission with climate skeptics,” said a lawyer with some leftist outfit called Demand Justice. “Here we have a Supreme Court commission with people who don’t think the Supreme Court is broken. They’re arguing first principles as opposed to what reforms are necessary.”

Imagine arguing first principles. And believing the Supreme Court is unbroken. How can you take such people seriously?

Scuttling the current rules about the U.S. Supreme Court — or “reforming” them, as some suggest — has its own problems. First, if the court can be expanded to include more liberals during this presidential term, and it can with an act of Congress, what’s to keep it from being expanded in the next Republican administration? And expanded again after that? Until it becomes just another legislature, another part of the government to be gamed.

Instead, the U.S. Supreme Court should be what the founders thought it should be: an arbitrator of what the Constitution says. And kept away, as much as possible, from the partisan squabbles.

The whole point of lifetime appointments to the court — though not spelled out in such direct language in the Constitution; only interpreted that way for 234 years — is to protect the justices from interference from the other two branches.

As long as the justices show “good behavior,” the Constitution allows them to serve. And they are allowed to interpret the Constitution without regard to the winds howling in either direction in this storm we call representative democracy.

Term limits, on the other hand, would probably take a constitutional amendment. In this political environment, that may be all but impossible.

Conservatives now hold a 6-3 majority on the nation’s highest court. So obviously the system must be broken and pieced back together. For the record, we never heard that a major restructuring of one of the three branches of government was needed when liberal justices held the reins.

There was one line item on this commission’s agenda that did catch our fancy. That is, should there be a rule or law that requires a vote — up or down — in the Senate when a nominee for the Supreme Court is sent there by the White House?

The Senate is constitutionally required to advise and consent the president on these nominees, but does that include “ignore”? As the Senate did in 2016, before GOP leadership called an aboutface in the days before the 2020 election?

The two major political parties have weaponized the nation’s highest court. A way to unring that bell might be to require up-or-down votes on nominees. We’d like to have that debate. At least that discussion/wrasslin’ match is worthy. Unlike court-packing for partisan advantage.