The Presidential Commission on the Supreme Court of the United States released on Monday its Draft Final Report that revealed its members are divided on the issue of court packing.
According to the 288-paged Draft Final Report, the members of the Presidential Commission on the Supreme Court of the United States pointed out that they were mandated not to come out with a recommendation to President Joe Biden but rather to present the areas on which the issue could be debated on and that they were able to fulfill in the report.
"As would be expected, the Commissioners appointed by the President hold various and sometimes opposing views on the legal and policy issues raised in the Court reform debate, and disagreements are noted at various points in the analysis. The Executive Order does not call for the Commission to issue recommendations, but the Report does provide a critical appraisal of arguments in the reform debate," the Commission said.
"Given the size and nature of the Commission and the complexity of the issues addressed, individual members of the Commission would have written the Report with different emphases and approaches. But the Commission submits this Report today in the belief that it represents a fair and constructive treatment of the complex and often highly controversial issues it was charged with examining," they elaborated.
The Commission concluded that what the report contains is but a reflection of what is being discussed by Americans in the public sphere.
"The Commission as a whole takes no position on the validity or strength of these claims. Mirroring the broader public debate, there is profound disagreement among Commissioners on this issue," the Supreme Court Commission stressed.
Biden created the Commission on April 9, 2021 through Executive Order 14023 to document the "role and operation of the Supreme Court" in the constitutional system of the United States and an "analysis of the principal argument in the contemporary debate for and against Supreme Court reform, including an appraisal of the merits and legality of particular reform proposals."
Though, in the same month, a Mason-Dixon Polling & Strategy survey revealed that 65% of Americans oppose Supreme Court packing and 31% agree to doing so, while 4% are not sure about it. The survey was conducted on 1,100 registered voters on April 15-19, which was after Biden's Executive Order was released.
The Democrats then threatened to push the court's packing in May when the Supreme Court agreed to review the constitutionality of states banning abortions for 15 weeks of pregnancy through the landmark case Dobbs v. Jackson Women's Health Organization, which was feared to lead to overturning Roe v. Wade.
Accordingly, the Biden Administration wants to impose reforms in the Supreme Court through packing by adding justices that would be able to get political results aimed for by the Democratic Party based on a political commentary of Kelly Shackelford, First Liberty Institute President and CEO.
Shackelford then created a coalition in August to reject the court packing together with Samaritan's Purse President Franklin Graham and Dr. James Dobson.
Supreme Court Justice Stephen Breyer, in the face of the growing public debate on the court's reform, warned Democrats that doing so could actually destroy the credibility of the justice system saying "people could lose trust in the court."
In line with this, the Presidential Commission of the Supreme Court affirmed that opponents "believe efforts to expand the Court or otherwise alter its structure at this moment would threaten the independence of the Court." They then stressed that though there was no specific number of judges the Supreme Court should have as per the U.S. Constitution, the decision for its reform is "well within Congress's formal discretion."
"Critics of Court expansion worry that such efforts would pose considerable risk to our constitutional system, including by spurring parties able to take control of the White House and Congress at the same time to routinely add Justices to bring the Court more into line with their ideological stances or partisan political aims. Court-packing, in the critics' view, would compromise the Court's long-term capacity to perform its essential role of policing the excesses of the other branches and protecting individual rights," the Final Draft Report said.
