The Future of Supreme Court Reform

Abstract

This Essay seeks to examine the prospects for Supreme Court reform — in both the short and the long term. Although the current political balance of power makes major structural reform unlikely, we argue that there are a number of more modest reforms that Congress, the Executive Branch, and even the Supreme Court itself could adopt. This kind of “skinny” Court reform is worthy of serious consideration, even if it does not solve all the problems that proponents of reform hope to address. Looking to the long term, we argue that the factors which generated a surge of interest in Court reform in the last three years are unlikely to disappear, and there are realistic scenarios in which structural reform of the Court begins to look possible once more.

Keywords: Supreme Court, Court reform, Congress, Executive branch