Presidential Commission on the Supreme Court of the United States
the Constitution provides that there shall be ‘one Supreme Court;’ but it also provides that the appellate jurisdiction of that court shall be exerted ‘both as to law and as to fact with such exceptions, and under such regulations as Congress may make.’”).
- ↑ See S. Rep. No. 51-1571, at 3 (“Congress has from the beginning, from time to time, declared what number out of and less than the whole number of justices shall be such a quorum.”).
- ↑ Id.
- ↑ Id. at 4.
- ↑ 21 Cong. Rec. 10,227 (1890) (statement of Sen. Joseph Dolph, R-OR).
- ↑ See, e.g., Id. (stating that he “sympathize[d]” with the notion held by some senators that such a division “would detract from [the Court’s] dignity and importance and from the weight, if not from the authority, of its decisions”).
- ↑ See 21 Cong. Rec. 10,316 (1890) (showing that the proposal was rejected by a vote of 36–10).
- ↑ Jurisdiction of Circuit Courts of Appeals and United States Supreme Court: Hearing on H.R. 10479 Before the House Comm. on the Judiciary, 67th Cong. 3 (1922) (statement of Chief Justice Taft). To address the Court’s growing caseload, Congress instead expanded the scope of discretionary certiorari review. See Judiciary Act of 1925, Pub. L. No. 68-415, 43 Stat. 936.
- ↑ Letter from Charles Evans Hughes, C.J., to Burton K. Wheeler, U.S. Sen., supra note 39.
- ↑ See Supreme Court Case Selections Act of 1988, Pub. L. No. 100-352, 102 Stat. 662; Grove, supra note 171, at 968–78 (discussing the legislative debates leading up to this measure).
- ↑ Letter from Warren E. Burger, C.J., to Roman L. Hruska, U.S. Sen. (May 29, 1975), reprinted in Comm’n on Revision of Fed. Ct. App. Sys., Structure and Internal Procedures: Recommendations for Change (1975) app. d at 173 (“It has occasionally been proposed that the Supreme Court be enlarged so that the Court could sit in divisions or panels, but any such proposals would meet with almost universal opposition, even assuming their constitutionality. Such a change would appear to alter the basic concept of ‘one supreme Court’ under Article III.”).
- ↑ U.S. Const. art. II, § 2 (“[The President] shall nominate, and by and with the Advice and Consent of the Senate, shall appoint … Judges of the supreme Court.”).
- ↑ One prominent proposal of this type would establish a system by which every judge on the courts of appeals also would be appointed as an Associate Justice of the Supreme Court. The Court would hear cases as a panel of nine Justices, and the Court’s membership would be replenished every two weeks through random assignment. See Epps & Sitaraman, supra note 145, at 181–82 (2019). Proponents of this reform combine it with other significant changes, including a prohibition on having more than five Justices nominated by a single political party at one time; a rule that only a 6–3 majority of Justices could invalidate federal legislation; and a provision that would have the Justices select cases for review for future, unknown panels, but not their own.
- ↑ See Epps & Sitaraman, supra note 145, at 182–83; Resnik Testimony, supra note 100, at 23; Greene Testimony, supra note 100, at 9.
- ↑ See id. at 182–83; see also John G. Grove, Reforming the Court, Nat’l Affs. (2020), https://www.nationalaffairs.com/publications/detail/reforming-the-court.
- ↑ See Presidential Commission on the Supreme Court of the United States 1–5 (Aug. 2021) (written testimony of Erin F. Delaney, Northwestern University Pritzker School of Law), https://www.whitehouse.gov/wp-content/uploads/2021/08/Professor-Erin-Delaney.pdf (arguing that federalism and the two-party political system are responsible for the Supreme Court’s status as a “federal apex court,” but that apex courts need not be “overly politicized”).
- ↑ See Epps & Sitaraman, supra note 145, at 183; Grove, supra note 188.
- ↑ See Presidential Commission on the Supreme Court of the United States 10 (June 30, 2021) (written testimony of Kim Lane Scheppele, Princeton University) [hereinafter Scheppele Testimony], https://www.whitehouse.gov/wp-content/uploads/2021/06/Scheppele-Written-Testimony.pdf; Dixon Testimony, supra note 127, at 12. Texas and Oklahoma “maintain[] a bifurcated structure of civil and criminal courts of last
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