# Presidential Commission on the Supreme Court of the United States

The Presidential Commission on the Supreme Court of the United States (PCSCOTUS), also known informally as the Supreme Court commission, was a Presidential Commission established by U.S. President Joe Biden to investigate the idea of reforming the Supreme Court. It was slated to provide a nonpartisan analysis of "the principal arguments in the contemporary public debate for and against Supreme Court reform".
The commission issued its final report on December 8, 2021, which reviewed various legal questions about the Supreme Court. It did not recommend major changes to the operation of the Court, and no reforms resulted from the Commission.

## Origins
### Politicization of the Supreme Court

Months before the commission was established, Amy Coney Barrett had been nominated to the Supreme Court by then-president Donald Trump. This nomination was controversial. In 2016, Republicans had invoked the informal and seldom-used Thurmond rule to block the nomination of Merrick Garland, based on its proximity to a presidential election. Garland's nomination had come nearly 10 months before the 2016 United States presidential election. However, Trump's nomination of Barrett came just over one month before the 2020 United States presidential election, and was appointed to the court. Many Democrats interpreted this as unjust, and proof of politicization in Supreme Court nominations. This grievance, along with the Republicans' resulting 6-3 majority, led to pressure from some Democrats to respond accordingly.

### Proposals from Democrats

During the 2020 Democratic primaries, Pete Buttigieg proposed that the size of the Supreme Court be increased to 15, in order to reduce the significance of partisanship. He described the proposal as "no more a departure from norms than what the Republicans did to get the judiciary to the place it is today”.
Rather than a specific proposal, Biden signaled the idea of the commission on the 2020 campaign trail, saying the court was "getting out of whack". Biden also stated that "it’s not about court-packing,” adding that "there’s a number of other things that our constitutional scholars have debated… the last thing we need to do is turn the Supreme Court into just a political football". Biden won the Democratic primary, and then the 2020 United States presidency.

## Commencement

The commission was established through Executive Order 14023, issued on April 9, 2021. The order determined that the commission must issue a report within 180 days of its first public meeting, which took place May 19, 2021.
An editorial of The Wall Street Journal wrote that the commission's membership "tilts sharply to the legal and political left", and the libertarian Cato Institute estimated the ratio of progressives to conservatives as 3:1. However, an article in Vox described the membership as a "win for the [conservative] Federalist Society", saying that "while the author of one of the most significant attacks on Obamacare in the last decade [Thomas B. Griffith] is on Biden’s commission, none of the leading academic proponents of Supreme Court reform were appointed". These leading academic proponents included Daniel Epps and Ganesh Sitaraman, who had authored Pete Buttigieg's proposal to expand the Supreme Court, and who were not invited to the commission.

## Report

The final report was submitted to President Biden on December 7, 2021 with unanimous approval. The 300-page final report reviewed the history and legal significance of various questions around the Supreme Court, but did not support any structural changes. While it was generally supportive of allowing TV cameras in the courtroom, it did not take a position on issues such as term limits or expanding the court.
Biden had not asked the commission for recommendations, and did not commit to a specific timeline to review the report. This led to criticism that the report was not seriously intended to improve the institution. Some progressive members of the commission specified that their approval was to submit the report to Biden, not a vote to retain the status quo.
As of 2024, no legal reforms have resulted from the commission.

## Members

| Member | Role | Relevant experience | Appointed | Left commission |
| Robert Bauer | Co-chair | Former White House Counsel | April 9, 2021 | December 8, 2021 |
| Cristina M. Rodríguez | Co-chair | Professor at Yale Law School | April 9, 2021 | December 8, 2021 |
| Michelle Adams | Member | Professor at the Cardozo School of Law | April 9, 2021 | December 8, 2021 |
| Kate Andrias | Rapporteur | Professor at Michigan Law School | April 9, 2021 | December 8, 2021 |
| Jack Balkin | Member | Professor at Yale Law School | April 9, 2021 | October 2021 |
| William Baude | Member | Professor at the University of Chicago Law School | April 9, 2021 | December 8, 2021 |
| Guy-Uriel E. Charles | Member | Professor at Duke Law School | April 9, 2021 | December 8, 2021 |
| Andrew Manuel Crespo | Member | Professor at Harvard Law School | April 9, 2021 | December 8, 2021 |
| Walter E. Dellinger III | Member | Professor at Duke Law School; former Acting Solicitor General of the United States | April 9, 2021 | December 8, 2021 |
| Justin Driver | Member | Professor at Yale Law School | April 9, 2021 | December 8, 2021 |
| Richard H. Fallon Jr. | Member | Professor at Harvard Law School | April 9, 2021 | December 8, 2021 |
| Caroline Fredrickson | Member | Former president of the American Constitution Society | April 9, 2021 | December 8, 2021 |
| Heather K. Gerken | Member | Dean of Yale Law School | April 9, 2021 | December 8, 2021 |
| Nancy Gertner | Member | Former judge of the United States District Court for the District of Massachusetts | April 9, 2021 | December 8, 2021 |
| Jack Goldsmith | Member | Professor at Harvard Law School; former United States Assistant Attorney General for the Office of Legal Counsel | April 9, 2021 | December 8, 2021 |
| Thomas B. Griffith | Member | Former judge of the United States Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit | April 9, 2021 | December 8, 2021 |
| Tara Leigh Grove | Member | Professor at the University of Alabama Law School | April 9, 2021 | December 8, 2021 |
| Bert Huang | Member | Professor at Columbia Law School | April 9, 2021 | December 8, 2021 |
| Sherrilyn Ifill | Member | President of the NAACP Legal Defense Fund | April 9, 2021 | December 8, 2021 |
| Olatunde C. Johnson | Member | Professor at Columbia Law School | April 9, 2021 | December 8, 2021 |
| Michael S. Kang | Member | Professor at Northwestern Law School | April 9, 2021 | December 8, 2021 |
| Alison LaCroix | Member | Professor at the University of Chicago Law School | April 9, 2021 | December 8, 2021 |
| Margaret H. Lemos | Member | Professor at Duke Law School | April 9, 2021 | December 8, 2021 |
| David F. Levi | Member | Former dean of Duke Law School; former chief judge of the United States District Court for the Eastern District of California; former judge of the United States District Court for the Eastern District of California; former United States Attorney for the Eastern District of California | April 9, 2021 | December 8, 2021 |
| Trevor Morrison | Member | Dean of the New York University School of Law | April 9, 2021 | December 8, 2021 |
| Caleb Nelson | Member | Professor at the University of Virginia Law School | April 9, 2021 | October 2021 |
| Richard Pildes | Member | Professor at the New York University School of Law | April 9, 2021 | December 8, 2021 |
| Michael D. Ramsey | Member | Professor at the University of San Diego Law School | April 9, 2021 | December 8, 2021 |
| Kermit Roosevelt III | Member | Professor at the University of Pennsylvania Law School; great-great-grandson of Theodore Roosevelt | April 9, 2021 | December 8, 2021 |
| Bertrall Ross | Member | Professor at the UC Berkeley School of Law | April 9, 2021 | December 8, 2021 |
| David A. Strauss | Member | Professor at the University of Chicago Law School | April 9, 2021 | December 8, 2021 |
| Laurence Tribe | Member | Professor at Harvard Law School; co-founder of the American Constitution Society | April 9, 2021 | December 8, 2021 |
| Adam White | Member | Resident scholar at the American Enterprise Institute | April 9, 2021 | December 8, 2021 |
| Keith Whittington | Member | Professor at Princeton University | April 9, 2021 | December 8, 2021 |
| Michael Waldman | Member | President of the Brennan Center for Justice; former White House Director of Speechwriting | April 9, 2021 | December 8, 2021 |
Two of the commission's members, Caleb Nelson and Jack Goldsmith, had resigned their positions by October 2021.