The Presidential Commission on the Supreme Court voted unanimously Tuesday in favor of approving their final report and sending it to President Biden’s desk.

The vote concluded the work of the 34-member commission, which held six public meetings and called on 44 witnesses. Biden, who has expressed opposition to expanding the court, formed the commission in April to study court expansion and reform amid calls from some within the Democratic Party to add more justices.

The final draft of the 288-page report, which drew vocal opposition regarding some of its conclusions, was released Monday and stopped short of offering specific recommendations. Instead, it offered a summary of arguments for and against issues ranging from court-packing and judicial term limits to various elements of court practice.

During Tuesday’s virtual hearing, several members noted the sharp differences of opinion among those on the commission regarding such issues, which the report summary said mirrors “the broader public debate.”

“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,” the report’s summary read. “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.”

Regarding court-packing, the report said: “No serious person, in either major political party, suggests court packing as a means of overturning disliked Supreme Court decisions, whether the decision in question is Roe v. Wade or Citizens United. Scholars could say, until very recently, that even as compared to other court reform efforts, ‘court-packing’ is especially out of bounds. This is part of the convention of judicial independence.”

“The commission takes no position on the validity or strength of these claims,” the report’s summary added. “Mirroring the broader public debate, there is profound disagreement among commissioners on these issues. We present the arguments in order to fulfill our charge to provide a complete account of the contemporary court reform debate.”

Kelly Shackelford, who serves as president, CEO and chief counsel for First Liberty Institute, said in a statement: “The American public reject court-packing and any other attempt to destabilize the judiciary. Even after numerous polls show Americans reject court-packing, far-Left progressives are clearly trying to expand their political power under the guise of ‘court-reform.’

“Expanding the membership of the United States Supreme Court is nothing more than a transparent, partisan scheme to achieve purely political objectives and exercise raw power that must be rejected,” Shackelford added.

Source: https://www.foxnews.com/politics/presidential-supreme-court-commission-votes-unanimously-to-send-controversial-report-to-bidens-desk

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President Biden will issue an executive order Friday to form a commission to study reforms to the United States Supreme Court.

Biden, under pressure from liberals to expand the size of the high court, promised to create the commission during a “60 Minutes” interview back in October in the wake of Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg’s death.

The 36-member commission will be bipartisan and will hold public meetings to evaluate court reforms. The new panel will have 180 days from the first meeting to complete its report on the pros and cons of court reforms.

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While court-packing — or expanding the number of justices beyond nine — has been the most high-profile court reform debated, Biden’s executive order seeks to look at other judicial changes, including the lifetime appointment of justices.

According to the White House, the commission will look into “the length of service and turnover of justices on the Court; the membership and size of the Court; and the Court’s case selection, rules, and practices.”

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Biden picked two chairs to lead the commission: New York University School of Law professor Bob Bauer, the former White House Counsel under former President Barack Obama, and Yale Law School Professor Cristina Rodriguez, a former Justice Department official and clerk to former Justice Sandra Day O’Connor.

The other members are scholars, lawyers, retired members of the judiciary, and advocates, including Caroline Fredrickson, the past president of the American Constitution Society, a progressive legal organization; Sherrilyn Ifill, president of the NAACP Legal Defense & Educational Fund; and Adam White, a resident scholar at the American Enterprise Institute and member of the conservative Federalist Society.

President Donald Trump and Amy Coney Barrett stand on the Blue Room Balcony after Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas administered the Constitutional Oath to her on the South Lawn of the White House in Washington, Monday, Oct. 26, 2020. (AP Photo/Patrick Semansky)

Biden has been cool to the idea of court-packing in the past, calling it a “bonehead idea” back in 1983 and said during the presidential campaign that he’s “not a fan of court-packing.”

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But Biden pledged to form the commission during the campaign as liberals were outraged that former President Trump got to appoint a third Supreme Court justice — Amy Coney Barrett — and Senate Republicans fast-tracked her confirmation in October despite the 2020 election just days away.

Progressives, including prominent lawmakers like Sen. Ed Markey, D-Mass., vowed to abolish the filibuster and expand the Supreme Court should they retake power.

In the “60 Minutes” interview before he was elected, Biden said the court system was “getting out of whack” and said he supports forming a commission to look at “alternatives” to court-packing.

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“It’s not about court-packing,” Biden said in the October 2020 interview. “There’s a number of other things that our constitutional scholars have debated, and I’ve looked to see what recommendations that commission might make. … There’s a number of alternatives that go well beyond packing.”

Fox News’ Kellianne Jones contributed to this report.

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