Editor's Notes: Court Reform With the Appearance of Nonpartisanship

A little under two years ago, Oregon Senator Ron Wyden introduced, in the words of his office, “Sweeping Court Reforms to Restore Public Trust as Supreme Court Faces Legitimacy Crisis.” If Democrats had taken the trifecta in that election, there’s a good chance that that bill would have made it into law. More recently, Justin Briley proposed a more radical measure here at Liberal Currents.

I’m quite comfortable with the idea of a 2029 trifecta simply doing a one-time expansion in order to stop the current Court majority from sabotaging any attempt to rebuild or to hold Donald Trump and his officials accountable. One of the most important things we will need is a majority willing to take a very narrow reading of the pardon clause, so as to exclude the president himself and his associates. 

We will also need to obtain this majority quite quickly, so that prosecutions can begin in the first year. Therefore, confirmations ought to be done all at once, just as Republicans confirmed seventy-four Trump nominees at once this month.

Both Justin and Wyden, however, have an eye towards a permanent, new settlement, beyond the short term imperative to get the Court out of the way of functional governance and, one hopes, a new Reconstruction.

So I’d like to walk through another potential court reform, one that borrows a bit from both and could provide a way of giving the appearance of not being blatantly partisan.