Page:EO 14023 Commission Final Report.pdf/110

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Presidential Commission on the Supreme Court of the United States

  1.   H.R. Rep. No. 108-691, at 110 (2004) (Minority Report) (invoking Roosevelt’s plan to criticize bills that would have restricted federal jurisdiction over challenges to the Defense of Marriage Act and to the use of “under God” in the Pledge of Allegiance, and arguing that, just as Roosevelt’s plan failed, “so too must this modern day effort to show the courts ‘who is boss’ fail as well”).
  2.   See Grove, supra note 54, at 512–17 (recounting how, beginning in the 1950s, both Republican and Democratic lawmakers treated “Court packing” as a political epithet and repeatedly denounced Roosevelt’s plan).
  3.   Id. at 532–33.
  4.   Jackson Testimony, supra note 106, at 20–21.
  5.   David Kosar & Katarina Sipulova, How to Fight Court-Packing?, 6 Const. Stud. 133 (2020).
  6.   Jodi Finkel, Judicial Reform in Argentina in the 1990s: How Electoral Incentives Shape Institutional Change, 39 Lat. Am. Rsch. Rev. 56, 63–64 (2004).
  7.   Steven Levitsky & James Loxton, Populism and Competitive Authoritarianism in Latin America, in Routledge Handbook of Global Populism (Carlos de la Torre ed., 2018).
  8.   Ozan O. Varol, Lucia Dalla Pellegrina & Nuno Garoupa, An Empirical Analysis of Judicial Transformation in Turkey, 65 Am. J. Compar. L. 187, 197–99 (2017).
  9.   David Landau, Abusive Constitutionalism, 47 U.C. Davis L. Rev. 189, 209 (2013); Kim Lane Scheppele, Autocratic Legalism, 85 U. Chi. L. Rev. 545, 551–52 (2018).
  10.   Michał Ziółkowski, Two Faces of the Polish Supreme Court After “Reforms” of the Judiciary System in Poland: The Question of Judicial Independence and Appointments, 5 Eur. Papers 347, 350 (2020).
  11.   Skeptics of expansion also argue that the American example in the world matters and that politicians at home and abroad who might wish to control their courts might find themselves emboldened to take such actions if the United States engages in Court packing, regardless of the reasons for the U.S. reform. See Presidential Commission on the Supreme Court of the United States 8:15:20–8:17:15 (July 20, 2021) (oral testimony of Marin K. Levy, Duke University School of Law), https://www.whitehouse.gov/pcscotus/public-meetings (stating that “[c]ertainly if we were to see expansion of the Supreme Court, that could be seen as some sort of green light” at the state level, although also noting that any such impact would be uncertain); Presidential Commission on the Supreme Court of the United States 10–11 (June 30, 2021) (written testimony of Rosalind Dixon, University of New South Wales, Sydney) [hereinafter Dixon Testimony], https://www.whitehouse.gov/wp-content/uploads/2021/06/Dixon-Letter-SC-commission-June-25-final.pdf (noting that “[c]omparative scholars … highlight the potential for renewed use of court-packing in the US to be seen as legitimating new and expanded attempts at court-packing in a range of democracies under threat” while suggesting that the risk of such borrowing with respect to “court-packing” may be less severe because authoritarians are already able to rely on Roosevelt’s 1937 plan).
  12.   Feldman Testimony, supra note 98, at 8 (“Under almost all ordinary circumstances, court-packing would seriously undermine the legitimacy of the Supreme Court.”); Presidential Commission on the Supreme Court of the United States 1 (June 30, 2021) (written testimony of Michael W. McConnell, Stanford Law School) [hereinafter McConnell Testimony], https://www.whitehouse.gov/wp-content/uploads/2021/06/McConnell-SCOTUS-Commission-Testimony.pdf (“Any attempt to increase the size of the Court … would be a severe blow to the reputation of the Court as a legal institution … .”); Siegel Testimony, supra note 109, at 2 (“Court-packing would significantly undermine the Court’s independence and, in almost all circumstances, risk its legal and public legitimacy.”); Presidential Commission on the Supreme Court of the United States 90 (July 20, 2021) (written testimony of Supreme Court Practitioners’ Committee, co-chaired by Kenneth Geller and Maureen Mahoney) [hereinafter Supreme Court Practitioners’ Committee Testimony], https://www.whitehouse.gov/wp-content/uploads/2021/07/Geller-Mahoney-Testimony.pdf (“[T]he independence of the Court and its standing with the public would be gravely compromised if Congresses were to add seats for the purpose of affecting the Court’s jurisprudence … .”).
  13.   See Presidential Commission on the Supreme Court of the United States 2:58:15–2:58:44 (June 30, 2021) (oral testimony of Maya Sen, John F. Kennedy School of Government, Harvard University), https://www.whitehouse.gov/pcscotus/public-meetings/june-30-2021 (“How would the public perceive court expansion? … [I]t’s going to be filtered through partisan concerns at the public opinion level.”).
104 | December 2021