How Biden’s potential Supreme Court changes 'fall short': expert

21 July 2024

The Washington Post reported last week that president Joe Biden is "preparing to roll out a plan he's been working on behind the scenes to make the Supreme Court more accountable."

In a Sunday, July 21 op-ed published by MSNBC, writer Hayes Brown praises the potential changes, but submits that the president could do much more.

"A major shift for someone who has been wary about taking on the third branch of government," Brown writes, "It’s a welcome move that could finally help rein in a court that has attempted to place itself above the other two branches."

Brown notes that NBC News reported, "The changes Biden is considering include 'legislation to establish term limits for justices and establishing an updated code of ethics that would be binding and enforceable.'"

While "these are both strong ideas that I wish Biden had endorsed sooner," the MSNBC Daily editor writes, "they still fall short of what would be the most effective way to transform the court’s workings."

Brown writes:

[It is] entirely reasonable to argue that given the number of issues that certain members of the court must bear, it would be much more equitable to increase the number of justices to share that load. It would just so happen that in doing so, Democrats would be able to rebalance the court after its steady swing to the right over the last several decades. Doing so would shift the court from a 6-3 conservative supermajority to one that has seven liberals and six Republican-appointed justices.

Two problems with this, Brown notes, include, "linking the court’s expansion to the circuits is a move that will work only the once, at least not without a major reorganization of the circuit level."

Second, he adds, "timing is key here. Because the court-expansion method I’ve described is entirely constitutional and precedented, it would also be entirely fair for Republicans to pull it off themselves. While some may be content with their current dominance, I’d be shocked to see a GOP trifecta reject cementing an even more unsurmountable grasp on the Supreme Court."

Brown's full op-ed is available here.

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