With Commission Concluded, It’s Time To Act On Supreme Court Reform

WASHINGTON, D.C., December 7, 2021 – Today, President Biden’s Commission on the Supreme Court concluded its work by voting to approve its final report. By design, the report makes no recommendations, but it does detail the conservative takeover of the Supreme Court and various proposals to reform it. Those include imposing a code of ethics on the justices that is similar to what lower courts must follow, imposing term limits on justices, and expanding the Court by adding more justices. 

Alliance for Justice testified before the Commission in July, expressing the dire need for these reforms in the wake of the Court’s attacks on democracy and civil rights. Since then, evidence of the Court’s extremism has only increased as it allowed Texas’s clearly unconstitutional SB 8 to take effect and as all six conservative justices expressed interest in gutting Roe v. Wade. 

Alliance for Justice President Rakim H.D. Brooks issued the following statement: 

“The urgency to reform the Supreme Court was apparent when the Commission began its work, and the case is only stronger now. Since the Commission formed in April, this Supreme Court has gutted voting rights, blocked essential COVID protections, allowed Texas’s unconstitutional abortion ban to take effect, and made clear its intentions to end abortion access as we know it. The Court’s actions speak far louder than the Commission’s report. Together both make clear that reform is necessary. People across this country cannot wait for term limits to take effect before they can access an abortion or have their voting rights protected. Expansion is the only immediate remedy and it must be our most urgent and immediate priority.”