Biden authorizes study of Supreme Court overhaul
WASHINGTON – President Joe Biden ordered a study on overhauling the Supreme Court, creating a bipartisan commission Friday that will spend the next six months examining the politically incendiary issues of expanding the court and instituting term limits for justices, among other issues.
In launching the review, Biden fulfilled a campaign promise made amid pressure from activists and Democrats to realign the Supreme Court after its composition tilted to the right during President Donald Trump’s term. Trump nominated three justices to the high court, including conservative Justice Amy Coney Barrett, who was confirmed to replace the late liberal Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg just days before last year’s presidential election. That gave conservatives a 6-3 split with liberals on the court.
During the campaign, Biden sidestepped questions on expanding the court. A former chair of the Senate Judiciary Committee, Biden has asserted that the system of judicial nominations is “getting out of whack,” but has not said if he supports adding seats or making other changes to the current system of lifetime appointments, such as imposing term limits.
The 36-member commission, composed largely of academics, was instructed to spend 180 days studying proposed changes, holding public meetings and completing a report. But it was not charged with making a recommendation under the White House order that created it.
The panel will be led by Bob Bauer, who served as White House counsel for former President Barack Obama, and Cristina Rodriguez, a Yale Law School professor who served in the Office of Legal Counsel for Obama. Other prominent members include Walter Dellinger, a former top Supreme Court lawyer for the government during the Clinton administration; Harvard law professor Lawrence Tribe, who has supported the idea of expanding the court; and Sherrilyn Ifill, president and director-counsel of the NAACP Legal Defense and Educational Fund.
The makeup of the Supreme Court, always a hot-button issue, ignited again in 2016 when Democrats declared that Republicans gained an unfair advantage by blocking Obama’s nomination of then-judge Merrick Garland, now Biden’s attorney general, to fill the seat left empty by the death of conservative Justice Antonin Scalia. Thensenate Majority Leader Mitch Mcconnell, a Republican, refused to hold hearings on filling the vacancy, even though it was more than six months until the next presidential election.
Some progressives have viewed adding seats to the court or setting term limits as a way to offset the influence of any one president on its makeup. Conservatives have denounced such ideas as “court-packing” similar to the failed effort by President Franklin D. Roosevelt in the 1930s.
The commission’s launch comes amid speculation as to whether Biden will be able to put his stamp on the court if liberal Justice Stephen Breyer retires. Biden has promised to nominate the first Black woman to the court.
Some progressive groups have urged Breyer, 82, to retire while Democrats control the Senate and the confirmation process.