SCOTUS News

Biden to create bipartisan commission on Supreme Court reform

President Joe Biden will issue an executive order to create a commission to study potential reforms to the Supreme Court, the White House announced on Friday. The announcement fulfilled a campaign promise by the president, who last fall proposed the idea of a commission after he declined to endorse efforts by liberals to expand the Supreme Court – efforts that Justice Stephen Breyer criticized in a speech on Tuesday at Harvard Law School.

In its statement, the White House indicated that the commission will be a bipartisan one, made up of experts “on the Court and the Court reform debate.” Those experts, the White House added, will consider a variety of topics related to the Supreme Court and Supreme Court reform, including the size of the court, the justices’ tenure, and the court’s practices more broadly.

The co-chairs of the commission, which will complete its report within 180 days of its first public meeting, are Bob Bauer, an NYU law professor who served as White House counsel to President Barack Obama, and Cristina Rodríguez, a Yale Law School professor who served as a deputy assistant attorney general during the Obama administration. The other 34 members of the commission include lawyers, think-tank scholars, law professors and retired judges.

A full list of commission members is below:

Michelle Adams, professor of law at Benjamin N. Cardozo School of Law

Kate Andrias, professor of law at the University of Michigan

Jack M. Balkin, Knight Professor of Constitutional Law and the First Amendment at Yale Law School

Bob Bauer (co-chair), professor of practice, distinguished scholar in residence and co-director of the Legislative and Regulatory Process Clinic at New York University School of Law

William Baude, professor of law and faculty director of the Constitutional Law Institute at the University of Chicago Law School

Elise Boddie, professor of law and Judge Robert L. Carter Scholar at Rutgers University

Guy-Uriel E. Charles, Edward and Ellen Schwarzman Professor of Law at Duke Law School

Andrew Manuel Crespo, professor of law at Harvard University

Walter Dellinger, Douglas Maggs Emeritus Professor of Law at Duke University and partner at O’Melveny & Myers

Justin Driver, Robert R. Slaughter Professor of Law at Yale Law School

Richard H. Fallon Jr., Story Professor of Law at Harvard Law School

Caroline Fredrickson, former president of the American Constitution Society

Heather Gerken, dean and Sol & Lillian Goldman Professor of Law at Yale Law School

Nancy Gertner, retired judge on the U.S. District Court for the District of Massachusetts and senior lecturer on law at Harvard Law School

Jack Goldsmith, Learned Hand Professor of Law at Harvard Law School and senior fellow at the Hoover Institution

Thomas B. Griffith, retired judge on the U. S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit and special counsel at Hunton Andrews Kurth

Tara Leigh Grove, Charles E. Tweedy Jr. Endowed Chairholder of Law and director of the Program in Constitutional Studies at the University of Alabama School of Law

Bert I. Huang, Michael I. Sovern Professor of Law at Columbia University

Sherrilyn Ifill, president and director-counsel of the NAACP Legal Defense & Educational Fund

Michael S. Kang, William G. and Virginia K. Karnes Research Professor at Northwestern Pritzker School of Law

Olatunde Johnson, Jerome B. Sherman Professor of Law at Columbia Law School

Alison L. LaCroix, Robert Newton Reid Professor of Law at the University of Chicago Law School

Margaret H. Lemos, Robert G. Seaks LL.B. ’34 Professor of Law, senior associate dean for faculty and research and faculty co-advisor for the Bolch Judicial Institute at Duke Law School

David F. Levi, Levi Family Professor of Law and Judicial Studies and director of the Bolch Judicial Institute at Duke Law School

Trevor Morrison, dean and Eric M. & Laurie B. Roth Professor of Law at NYU School of Law

Caleb Nelson, Emerson G. Spies Distinguished Professor of Law and Caddell & Chapman Professor of Law at the University of Virginia School of Law

Richard H. Pildes, Sudler Family Professor of Constitutional Law at NYU School of Law

Michael D. Ramsey, Hugh and Hazel Darling Foundation Professor of Law at the University of San Diego School of Law

Cristina M. Rodríguez (co-chair), Leighton Homer Surbeck Professor of Law at Yale Law School

Kermit Roosevelt, professor of law at the University of Pennsylvania Carey Law School

Bertrall Ross, Chancellor’s Professor of Law at the University of California, Berkeley School of Law

David Strauss, Gerald Ratner Distinguished Service Professor of Law and faculty director of the Supreme Court and Appellate Clinic at the University of Chicago

Laurence Tribe, Carl M. Loeb University Professor and professor of constitutional law emeritus at Harvard University

Adam White, resident scholar at the American Enterprise Institute, assistant professor of law and director of the C. Boyden Gray Center for the Study of the Administrative State at George Mason University’s Antonin Scalia Law School

Keith E. Whittington, William Nelson Cromwell Professor of Politics at Princeton University

Michael Waldman, president of the Brennan Center for Justice at NYU School of Law

This post was originally published at Howe on the Court.