Biden forms commission to look into Supreme Court issues

WASHINGTON — President Joe Biden created a bipartisan commission Friday to study structural changes to the Supreme Court, giving the group 180 days to produce a report on a range of thorny topics including court expansion and term limits.

The commission, composed of 36 legal scholars, former federal judges and practicing lawyers, fulfills Mr. Biden’s campaign promise to establish such a group after activists pushed him to back expanding the court following Republicans’ rush to confirm Justice Amy Coney Barrett shortly before last year’s election. Mr. Biden has said he is “not a fan” of adding seats to the Supreme Court, but he has declined to say whether he supports any other changes to its structure.

The commission, however, is likely to disappoint liberals who are looking for quick action to blunt the court’s conservative majority, while giving the president cover to avoid wading into the contentious debate. The members are not tasked with giving Mr. Biden specific recommendations but rather providing an analysis of a range of proposed changes to the court. The executive order establishing the commission mandates that the group hold public meetings and take input from a range of stakeholders, with the report expected in October.

“The topics it will examine include 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 practice,” the White House said in a statement Friday.

Most of the commission’s members are academics, and they come from a range of political backgrounds and philosophies. Bob Bauer, a top lawyer on Mr. Biden’s campaign, and Cristina Rodríguez, a professor at Yale Law School, will chair the commission, which will be run out of the White House Counsel’s Office.

The panel includes prominent liberals such as Caroline Fredrickson, former president of the American Constitution Society, and Laurence Tribe, a professor emeritus at Harvard Law School. The group’s conservative members include Jack Goldsmith, a Harvard Law professor and former top official in George W. Bush’s Justice Department, and Princeton University professor Keith Whittington.