Court Reform Is Dead! Long Live Court Reform!

Joe Biden’s Commission on the Supreme Court voted on the final version of its report last week. In five dense chapters, it lists the pros and cons of reforms such as adding justices, limiting their terms, reducing the Court’s power, and improving its inner workings. A couple of minor exceptions aside, the commission hewed to the task the president gave it, which was not to endorse anything but to weigh the “merits and legality” of different options. Many of the Court’s critics believe that such a lack of forward momentum was the goal from the get-go: to stifle reform politics after a lengthy delay and leave things exactly as they are.

But if the commission was intended to be the place where Court reform went but not stopping there—we may look back on the commission as helping to set reform in motion, rather than stopping it in its tracks.