The director of strategic response for the Freedom From Religion Foundation has written a column chastising the presidential commission on Supreme Court reform for its avoidance of the truth.
In a piece for The Progressive magazine’s national op-ed service, Andrew L. Seidel excoriates the commission for not running with the most sensible solution for the current situation of the Supreme Court. Seidel explains in “SCOTUS commission misses the mark” that the commission seems to lack the courage to do the obvious.
“A tepid new report from Joe Biden’s Presidential Commission on the Supreme Court has failed to embrace the one best solution — adding seats to the court to counter years of court-packing,” begins his op-ed, distributed by the Tribune News Service to numerous media outlets in the United States and abroad.
The piece continues:
The report, which the commissioners unanimously voted to approve on Dec. 7, cited “profound disagreement over whether court expansion at this moment in time would be wise.” It decided to simply present the arguments for and against, rather than “judge the weight of any of the arguments” or take a “position on the wisdom of expansion.”
The report also declares that expanding the court “would almost certainly undermine or destroy the Supreme Court’s legitimacy” and would be seen as “a dangerous power grab by one political party,” without mentioning that this has already happened.
Partly, this is President Biden’s failure. The commission was empowered to produce a report on court reform, not actually make recommendations. However, the United States faces a problem, not a question. It’s clear what must be done with our captured Supreme Court. The problem is summoning the will to do it.
Seidel points out that Mitch McConnell and Donald Trump’s stacking of the Supreme Court during their tenure as Senate majority leader and president, respectively, has sabotaged everything from pandemic response and the fight against climate change to reproductive rights and marriage equality. “This is because every progressive plan, every public health order, every vaccine mandate, every abortion ban, every voter ID law, everything can be brought before this Supreme Court — a captured, broken body,” he starkly warns.
Seidel’s op-ed concludes, “The Supreme Court must be expanded now — even if the commission is too timid to ask for that.”
Read the full piece at The Progressive and please share it on your social media.
