Local legal minds on Biden’s court commission
President Biden has tapped some big-name Massachusetts legal minds to serve on his bipartisan commission tasked with exploring the possibility of adding seats to the U.S. Supreme Court and other potentially thorny federal judiciary reforms.
Retired federal Judge Nancy Gertner and her Harvard Law colleague Laurence Tribe are among the legal heavyweights who will serve on Biden’s new Presidential Commission on the Supreme Court of the United States.
Biden signed an executive order creating the commission on Friday.
In doing so, he makes good on the campaign pledge to create a bipartisan commission to explore court reforms that he issued last fall amid calls for courtpacking from some liberals after then-President Donald Trump picked Justice Amy Coney Barrett to succeed the late Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg, tipping the high court’s balance to the right.
Biden said last fall he’s “not a fan” of court-packing. Still, his new commission “will examine … 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 commission will have 180 days to issue a report after its first public hearing.
The 36-member commission — comprised of legal scholars, former federal justices and practicing lawyers boasting plenty of elite credentials — is being led by New York University Law School Professor Bob Bauer and Yale Law School Professor Cristina Rodriguez.
While Tribe will bring some of the liberal prospective, another Harvard Law professor, Jack Goldsmith, a former assistant attorney general under former President George W. Bush, will represent the conservative.
Other Harvard Law School professors and lecturers taking part include Andrew Manuel Crespo, Richard H. Fallon Jr., Thomas B. Griffith, and Guy-Uriel E. Charles, who will join the
Harvard faculty in July.
Gertner is currently one of the attorneys advocating for the compassionate release of Boston bomber Alfred Trenkler from his Arizona prison. She’s also headed up U.S. Sen. Elizabeth Warren and U.S. Sen. Edward Markey’s bipartisan commission on Massachusetts U.S. attorney and federal judicial nominations.
Biden announced the commission days after liberal Justice Stephen Breyer warned those eyeing structural changes like courtpacking to “think long and hard before embodying those changes in law,” during a speech at Harvard Law School.
Liberals are pushing Breyer, 82, to retire from the high court so Biden can replace him with the first Black woman justice while Democrats control the Senate.
White House press secretary Jen Psaki said the president will leave the decision to Breyer.