Majority Of Americans Want Supreme Court Term Limits | Court Expansion? Not So Much

April 19, 2021

Most Americans want to end life tenure at the Supreme Court. A new Ipsos poll for Reuters found that although less than half of Americans are in favor of other court reforms, a majority want to end lifetime appointments for justices. The poll found 63% of adults supported term or age limits, but only 38% would support expanding the court. Chris Kahn with Reuters reports, “Some Democratic lawmakers on Thursday introduced legislation to expand the Supreme Court to 13 justices, a move that they believe would restore public confidence in the judicial branch. But the party’s leadership appeared cool to the idea of pursuing that course.”

John Fritze with USA Today covers PRESIDENT JOE BIDEN’S recently announced commission to study Supreme Court reforms and notes it hasn’t convened its first meeting and the commission is already facing political headwinds. “Dismissed by some on the right as an effort to ‘pack the court’ with additional justices, the 36-member group also drew fire from some quarters on the left for its composition of academics, limited mandate and six-month timeline to finish its work.” GABE ROTH, Executive Director of Fix the Court, a nonpartisan group seeking term limits for justices, told Fritze: “I am a little disappointed that the commission wasn’t given a mandate that says ‘come up with recommendations. I don’t believe it’s that hard to come up with a consensus on core issues.”

As the gun violence epidemic continues in the U.S., including last week’s mass shooting in Indianapolis in which eight innocent people were killed at a FedEx center, the Supreme Court’s decision in District of Columbia v. Heller looms large. Former JUSTICE ANTONIN SCALIA authored the 5-4 decision in the case. It was the first time the Supreme Court ruled the Second Amendment’s “right to bear arms” protects an individual right, rather than one related to organized state militia as had been the legal understanding for decades. Joan Biskupic with CNN writes, “Yet while Scalia established new precedent, drawing sharp dissents that he had misread history, the opinion came with caveats relevant to today’s gun control debate.” Scalia also noted that the Second Amendment isn’t an unlimited right and does not allow someone to “keep and carry any weapon whatsoever in any manner whatsoever and for whatever purpose.”

Later this month SCOTUS will hear a case that Ian Millhiser with Vox says could “fundamentally alter the court’s approach to laws requiring political organizations to disclose their donors.” Millhiser explains the case — Americans for Prosperity Foundation v. Rodriguez — which he says cannot be fully understood without taking a walk down memory lane and revisiting the Supreme Court’s famous Citizens United decision. “A lot has changed since Citizens United tucked this pro-disclosure ruling into its broader ruling against campaign finance limits, however. Four of the eight justices who supported disclosure rules have since left the court, and three of them were replaced by judges who are significantly more conservative than the person they replaced. Which brings us to Americans for Prosperity Foundation. The plaintiffs in the case — which include a conservative advocacy group closely associated with the billionaire Koch brothers, and the Thomas More Law Center, a conservative law firm that claims it was formed to promote ‘America’s Judeo-Christian heritage’ — seek to undercut pro-disclosure decisions such as Citizens United. And, with six Republican appointees on the Supreme Court, they have a very good chance of prevailing.”

The Editorial Board of The Wall Street Journal looks at a case before the Supreme Court today involving a man and his wife who came to the U.S. illegally in the 1990s. They came from El Salvador and after earthquakes hit their native country in 2001, they were granted Temporary Protected Status so they could stay and work in the U.S. They applied for permanent residency in 2014 but the government has said their illegal entry into the country all those years ago makes them ineligible. The Editorial Board writes Mr. Jose Santos Sanchez “deserves a definitive resolution, as do others like him who have sometimes spent decades as our neighbors, co-workers and fellow taxpayers.” But it’s not SCOTUS where he should get resolution the Ed Board argues: “The dereliction here is on Capitol Hill, since a better immigration policy would include a compromise that lets Mr. Sanchez stay in America. This week he will get his day in court. What he needs is his day in Congress.”

Adam Liptak with The New York Times takes a look at the Supreme Court’s view of the news media, which according to a new study to be published in The North Carolina Law Review has gotten increasingly negative over time. Liptak notes, “The study found that conservative justices have always been more apt to write negative things about the press. The new development is that liberal justices now have little good to say about it.”