The U.S. Supreme Court is broken. The Presidential Commission on the Supreme Court last week released draft discussion material that discounted one much-debated idea for fixing it — expanding the court’s size — but took a more positive stance on the idea of term limits for justices. If done right, that could well take the heat out of these occasional, unpredictable and destructive partisan battles over filling vacancies.
The high court is supposed to be above the partisan political squabbles of the moment. It clearly isn’t. In the more than two decades since the court split along partisan lines in Bush v. Gore to end Florida’s vote recount and hand the presidency to George W. Bush, the court has only become more blatantly partisan.
The most recent evidence was in the decision by the court’s conservative majority to let Texas’ bizarre, bounty-hunting anti-abortion law go into effect even though challenges to that law are still playing out. It was such a legally indefensible decision under the circumstances that even generally conservative Chief Justice John Roberts balked. That conservative justices and their supporters have felt compelled to give speeches lately denying they are partisan hacks creates the distinct impression of protesting too much.
