Friday, April 09, 2021

Justice Roberts, the Commission is Watching You!

Honestly this is probably the best we can hope for in terms of Court reform. It might actually do some good. There are few checks on the Supreme Court in our system, just the theoretical (yet virtually impossible to pull off in practice) threat of impeachment, the Justice's own sensitivity to the Court's credibility with the public, and the potential for Congress to muck around with the Court.

If the switch in time that saved nine taught us anything, it's that a credible threat of Court packing can sometimes be as effective as actual packing. Just having this commission out there might deter certain justices from issuing their most egregious decisions.

UPDATE: Apparently, there are some really worrying signs from the people Biden is appointing to the commission. I guess that undermines my point quite a bit. What a wasted opportunity. A really critical commission could have really checked an otherwise unchecked conservative power-center in the U.S. government. It's a major failure for the Biden Administration to just throw that opportunity away.