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President Biden will unveil a bipartisan commission to study structural changes to the Supreme Court on Friday, according to three people with knowledge of the forthcoming announcement, amid liberal calls for expansion to blunt the court’s conservative majority.
The commission, to include as many as three dozen people, will fulfill Biden’s campaign promise create a group to study changes to the court. Biden has said he is “not a fan of court-packing,” but he faced pressure during the campaign from liberals to back changes, including court expansion, after Republicans pushed to confirm Justice Amy Coney Barrett shortly before the 2020 election.
The commission, however, is likely to disappoint liberals who are looking for quick action. Most of the commission’s members are academics, and they will come from a range of political backgrounds. Bob Bauer, a top lawyer on Biden’s campaign, and Cristina Rodriguez, a professor at Yale Law School, will chair the commission, which will be run out of the White House Counsel’s Office. Other members include Caroline Fredrickson, the former president of the American Constitution Society, and Jack Goldsmith, a Harvard Law School professor.
The three people familiar with the plan spoke on the condition of anonymity ahead of a formal announcement. The White House declined to comment.
The court as we know it hasn't always existed. It has been smaller and it has been larger; the Judiciary Act of 1789 set the number at six, in 1807, Congress increased the number of justices to seven; in 1837, the number went up to nine; and in 1863 it went up to 10. In 1866, Congress passed the Judicial Circuits Act, which lowered it to seven and in 1869 it went back up to nine.
At one time, a justice had to be on the bench from each federal court district in which case we would be at 11. It might be time for limits of tenure to ensure staggered appointments by president. SCOTUS receives over 80,000 cases to potentially hear each year, that's likely far more than they were receiving in 1869.
We are in the midst of becoming a 3rd world country. If the people telling China Joe what to do are successful in packing the court, Republicans will merely pack the court next time they're in power and its a never ending cycle....probably thousands of USSCJ on the bench in the future. One thing is certain we will be no better than Venezuela in the coming years.
Why waste everyone's time? If he's going to appoint a commission to examine it, then it means that he's already decided that he's going to do it. Just be done with it so that we can all get on with our lives in the new country of whatever-it-is that he's going to call it. It sure as heck isn't America anymore.
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