Biden’s Supreme Court Commission Held Its First Session | The Free-Ride For Anti-Abortion Politicians May Soon Be Over

May 20, 2021

Greg Stohr with Bloomberg reports on PRESIDENT BIDEN’S Supreme Court commission holding its first public meeting yesterday. It’s been a huge week for Supreme Court news after justices announced they plan to hear an abortion case that reproductive rights advocates say could mean SCOTUS is preparing to upend its own decades-long precedent on the issue. Stohr writes that Biden’s commission meeting was a brisk 20 minutes, and largely dedicated to formalities. “The 33 members who attended took their oaths and several commissioners laid out the scope of their work, which will including analyzing proposals to expand the court, limit its powers and impose term limits on the justices.”

The Supreme Court commission will hold two days of public testimony in late June and July and then four additional hearings for debate on potential court fixes. During those two days of testimony, Todd Ruger with Roll Call notes as many as 24 witnesses will present and answer questions from the members of the commission. GABE ROTH, Executive Director of Fix the Court, told Ruger: “Though the first meeting of President Biden’s Supreme Court Reform Commission today was more housekeeping than iconoclasm — which likely disappointed some folks with large, social media-optimized megaphones — the fact that a bipartisan, presidentially approved body is discussing ways to modernize the high court is a major milestone.”

Carl Hulse and Lisa Lerer with The New York Times report that even though the Supreme Court announced just days ago that it plans to tackle an abortion case, that news has already affected political calculations for both parties in anticipation of the midterms. “Nearly all agree that the latest fight over Roe, which has been building for years, is certain to have significant political repercussions. Conservative voters are traditionally more energized than liberals about the abortion debate, and for many of them it has been the single issue spurring voter turnout. But Democrats, likely to be on the defensive given their current hold on the White House and Congress, say a ruling broadly restricting abortion rights by a court whose ideological makeup has been altered by three Trump-era appointees could backfire on Republicans and galvanize women.”

“If there is any good news to salvage from the court’s announcement this week, it is this: the free ride that anti-abortion politicians have enjoyed may be coming to a crashing end. Ever since the 2010 election ushered new Republican majorities into state legislatures, politicians there have been able to impose increasingly severe abortion restrictions without consequence, knowing that the lower courts would enjoin the laws before they took effect and save the people’s representatives from having to own their actions.” That’s Linda Greenhouse with The New York Times reminding us that most Americans do not want SCOTUS to overturn Roe v. Wade, according to all four nationwide polls from last fall including one conducted by Fox News. “Decades of effort to drive abortion to the margins of medical practice have failed to dislodge it from the mainstream of women’s lives. For the cynical game they have played with those lives, politicians have not paid a price. Now perhaps they will.”

“In her last years on the Supreme Court, JUSTICE RUTH BADER GINSBURG moved slowly. She was always the last justice to exit the courtroom, with JUSTICE CLARENCE THOMAS helping her down the steps from the Supreme Court bench. But Ginsburg, who died in September at age 87, was known for her speed at something: writing opinions.” Jessica Gresko with the Associated Press reports that in a new remembrance for the Supreme Court Historical Society, Justice Thomas comments on Ginsburg’s need for speed. She might have been known as the Notorious RBG, but it seems she had another, lesser-known nickname: “Rapid Ruth.” She was so quick in writing her opinions and responding to colleagues’ drafts that other justices always got back to her ASAP. Thomas wrote, “It was as though we all owed it to her to reciprocate her conscientiousness. I cannot recall a single colleague who felt burdened by this. In fact, it often served as a source of laughter.”