Court-packing scheme will only erode trust

'uring the presidential campaign, -oe Biden famously refused to say whether he¶d be part of a court-packing scheme intended to ensure that the Supreme &ourt looked the other way on constitutionally dubious progressive initiatives. (ventually, Mr. Biden said that, if elected, he¶d appoint a commission to study the issue.

On Friday, the president signed an executive order creating such a panel. ,ronically, the move comes just days after one of the Supreme &ourt¶s liberal members warned against expanding the number of justices to achieve policy goals.

“,t is wrong to think of the court as another political institution,” -ustice Stephen Breyer said last week in remarks at +arvard /aw School. “And it is doubly wrong to think of its members as junior league politicians.” +e added, “Structural alteration motivated by the perception of political influence can only feed that perception, further eroding that trust.”

-ustice Breyer, a 2 -year veteran of the court, also argued that the court is not a political body despite efforts to make it one. 'ifferences among the justices are based on differing judicial philosophies and constitutional interpretations, he said.

,t¶s true that the &onstitution is silent on the number of Supreme &ourt justices ² leaving that to &ongress ² although the panel has been comprised of nine jurists since 1 6 . But the progressive push to add as many as five justices is grounded in the same short-term thinking that led Senate 'emocrats to eliminate the filibuster for federal judicial nominees only to deeply regret the move three years later when they lost control of the upper chamber and the :hite +ouse.

For four years 'emocrats mewled incessantly about the danger 'onald 7rump posed to the nation¶s political and democratic institutions.

(xactly who is the real threat to America¶s political institutions? And where¶s the “moderate” -oe Biden who preached unity and was supposed to put the brakes on his party¶s rapid lurch to the left?

Mr. Biden¶s judicial panel will have 1 0 days to meet and includes

6 members, most from academia and the legal field. Although there are a handful of conservative or libertarian scholars on the commission, left-leaning philosophies dominate among the members. :hile court-packing will be its primary focus, the board will examine other issues, such as term limits for federal and Supreme &ourt justices, who currently receive lifetime appointments.

:hether all this is simply show designed to Tuiet the vocal hard left that now dominates the 'emocratic 3arty or whether the commission will actually lay the groundwork for overhauling the nation¶s judicial system remains to be seen, of course. By all means let¶s have a debate on the wisdom of ramming through a radical judicial reform grounded in hyperpartisan politics that polls show a healthy majority of Americans oppose. After all, how much political risk can the Biden administration tolerate heading into 2022 with an evenly split Senate and a tiny +ouse majority?