'Restore some balance': Senate bill would add 6 new justices to Supreme Court

26 September 2024

One Senate Democrat is proposing the most drastic overhaul of the U.S. Supreme Court since the Franklin Delano Roosevelt administration.

The Washington Post reported Thursday that Sen. Ron Wyden (D-Oregon) has authored a bill that would, among other things, add six new Supreme Court justices to the bench. These six new justices would be staggered out over the next three presidential administrations, with presidents appointing judges to fill those vacancies in the first and third year of their terms, in order to prevent one president from stacking the bench with his or her own desired judges.

In addition to creating six new vacancies on the High Court, Wyden's bill would also impose several new accountability measures for both the judges and to check the power of the Court itself. It includes a provision that would prevent a U.S. Senate controlled by the opposition party from indefinitely stalling a confirmation hearing — as then-Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Kentucky) did in 2016 — and it even includes major changes for the lower courts.

“It’s not an atomic secret that the process for selecting justices is politicized,” Wyden told the Post. “You’ve got this thoroughly politicized process resulting in a Supreme Court that now frequently issues sweeping rulings to overturn laws and upend precedents. We are proposing a way to restore some balance between the three branches of government.”

The bill would expand the federal judiciary as a whole to 15 judicial circuits, from the 13 circuits currently in place. This would create more than 100 new district court vacancies and approximately 60 vacancies at the appellate court level. With two new circuits, the power of the other 13 would be diluted, and it would also ease the backlog on federal court dockets with new judges to handle cases.

New binding ethics rules for Supreme Court justices are included in Wyden's bill. The Post reports that justices would have to list "income, dividends, property sales and gifts," and require the IRS to audit justices' tax returns each year and make their results public. This is likely a direct response to Justice Clarence Thomas, who has failed to report millions of dollars in gifts from wealthy benefactors over the course of roughly two decades. Some of those unreported gifts included luxurious vacations with lavish accommodations, and even a yacht trip to Russia.

Under Wyden's bill, any Supreme Court nomination that's been pending in the Senate Judiciary Committee for more than 180 days will automatically move to the full floor of the Senate for a final confirmation vote. This is a direct response to McConnell stalling then-D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals Chief Justice Merrick Garland's nomination, when then-President Barack Obama selected him to fill the vacancy resulting from the death of the late Justice Antonin Scalia.

After former President Donald Trump was elected, he then nominated Neil Gorsuch, who was confirmed to the bench in 2017. McConnell would later brag about the theft of what would have been Obama's third Supreme Court nomination in eight years as "the most consequential decision" of his political career.

Jeremy Fogel, who is the executive director of the Berkeley Judicial Institute, told the Post that adding new justices puts the Supreme Court on par with high courts in other countries and argued it was necessary in order to curb the power of the bench.

“Canada is a fraction the size of United States in terms of population and it has 15 justices,” Fogel said. “Most of the larger democracies in the world have bigger apex courts than we do.”

The bill is unlikely to pass the Senate, as Republicans will almost certainly invoke cloture and require 60 votes to advance it to a full up-or-down vote. Democrats will likely not find any Republicans to join them in supporting the bill, as the GOP is typically unfriendly to any efforts aimed at reining in the Supreme Court.

Click here to read the Post's report in its entirety (subscription required).

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