Brian Fallon, the executive director of Demand Justice, a liberal group that supports expanding the number of judges, portrayed the commission as a waste of time.
“The best thing about this commission is that it is finally over and the Biden administration will now have to consider what to do with this partisan Supreme Court,” he said.
But the commission — led by Bob Bauer, a former White House adviser to Obama, and Cristina Rodríguez, a Yale Law School professor who served in the Justice Department during the Obama administration — saw its mission as clarifying of difficult and complex issues rather than providing ammunition to one side.
It was unclear until Tuesday’s meeting whether such an ideologically diverse group would succeed in producing a document on such controversial issues and on which they could agree unanimously. Several commissioners said they would not have written the report in the same way had it been their job alone, but nonetheless praised it as a valuable guiding document for serious reflection on issues related to court reform.
David Levi, former dean of Duke Law School and former federal judge, said he voted in favor of the report as an honest assessment of the issues, even though he strongly opposed proposals to change the court’s composition or increase its jurisdiction. to limit. He warned that such ideas would curtail the independence of the judiciary, undermine the rule of law, and reflected what autocrats abroad had done to allay the problems with their power.
Another former federal judge, Nancy Gertner, who is now a professor at Harvard Law School, also praised the report, though she advocated expanding the number of judges. She said the Supreme Court’s legitimacy had been undermined by Republican efforts to “manipulate its membership,” and that the majority allowed the rollback of voting rights that would otherwise evolve the court’s composition in response to the results of free and fair elections. elections.
“This is a uniquely dangerous moment that requires a unique response,” she said, adding: “Whatever the short-term costs of expansion, I think these will be more than offset by the real benefits to the judicial independence and for our democracy.”
