By Stephen Macaulay

Biden said, while running for office, that he’d establish a commission to look at the Supreme Court. So he’s established a commission: the “Presidential Commission on the Supreme Court of the United States.”

Certainly a descriptive title.

The White House describes it as being a “bipartisan group of experts on the Court and the Court reform debate.”

There are 36 people on the commission. One of the problems that I see with it is that 35 of those people are all employed by universities. Sherrilyn Ifill is president and director-counsel of the NAACP Legal Defense & Educational Fund. She is the only one not lecturing or having a TA teach while otherwise engaged.

Not that I am anti-education.

But wouldn’t it be better to have more people who make their livelihoods by practicing law? Yes, many of the people on the commission have appeared many times in front of judges, even Supreme Court judges. But people who are making their daily bread by working briefs undoubtedly think differently about what the issues are than people who are getting a paycheck from an Ivy League school.

And another thing: 36 people? At some point meetings are going to be face-to-face meetings, not things occurring on Zoom. Thirty-six people.

A major league baseball team has 26 players and there are only nine in the game at any one time.

Thirty-six is rather, well, organizationally silly.

Oh, and I failed to mention that there will be public meetings as part of this so more people can chime in.

Something tells me there isn’t going to be a whole lot of substance.

So what is the purpose of this commission?

“The topics it will examine include the genesis of the reform debate; the Court’s role in the Constitutional system; 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.”

Let’s be clear here. The whole point of this exercise was originally promulgated because one Party thinks that there is too much influence on the Court on behalf of the Other Party.

Who’s who can be switched around depending on who holds the presidency and Congress.

To stick with the baseball metaphor, when an ump makes a bad call, there is a chorus of “Throw the bum out!”

Same thing here.

While there is no denying the importance of the Third Branch, it is notable how little space its establishment takes in the Constitution: Article III, Section 1, opens, “The judicial power of the United States, shall be vested in one Supreme Court, and in such inferior courts as the Congress may from time to time ordain and establish.”

That’s it.

And as for the lifetime appointments? That goes to the second sentence of the same: “The judges, both of the supreme and inferior courts, shall hold their offices during good behaviour, and shall, at stated times, receive for their services, a compensation, which shall not be diminished during their continuance in office.”

In other words, as long as they’re exhibiting “good behaviour,” they’ve got a job.

(By the way, those two quoted sentences make up the entirety of Article III, Section 1.)

The number of people on the Court?

Nowhere is it specified.

It is largely a case of tradition.

Arguably tradition is losing ground in the U.S. (and elsewhere), and more’s the pity for it.

Conservatives — real ones, not those who claim to hold conservative values then support people who fly in the face of them — think tradition has value.

Values, arguably, are losing ground in the U.S. (and elsewhere) and more’s the pity for it.

I maintain that the “Presidential Commission on the Supreme Court of the United States” will write a comprehensive, meticulously footnoted document that will be filed on a shelf in a building somewhere that is analogous to the warehouse at the end of Raiders of the Lost Ark.

This commission, however, will have a negative effect. People who have no greater knowledge about the judicial system beyond repeated watching of Matlock are going to maintain that the politicians have corrupted the Court.

And when people stop believing in something that is far from perfect but still good, we have a serious problem.