Democrat Sen. Ron Wyden proposes radical SCOTUS reform bill

The status and future of the U.S. Supreme Court has long been a source of partisan political controversy, but tensions escalated dramatically in the wake of the panel's reversal of the abortion precedent of Roe v. Wade.

Now, as the Washington Post reports, Democrat Sen. Ron Wyden (OR) has introduced an expansive bill that would break up existing norms related to the high court, grow its size, and, he says, rebuild public confidence in its operations.

Wyden weighs in

In response to what he says is a precipitous and damaging decline in public confidence in the impartiality of the highest court in the land, Wyden has stepped forward with a multi-faceted reform proposal.

Currently serving as chair of the Senate Finance Committee, Wyden conceded that it may be impossible to get the entire slate of adjustments through Congress, but he harbors hope that at least some key elements can secure approval.

Perhaps the most notable part of Wyden's bill is its provisions regarding court expansion, which would grow the panel from its current tally of nine justices all the way to 15 over a 12-year span.

The lawmaker believes the staggered nature of the proposed process would help reduce the chance that either political party would be able to pack the court with jurists of its choice, and presidents would be permitted to select justices in the first and third years of their administrations.

Another potentially controversial measure included in Wyden's bill is that for any statute passed by Congress to be judicially overturned, two-thirds of the Supreme Court and the circuit courts of appeals would need to agree, rather than just the SCOTUS majority currently required.

The Oregon Democrat would also like to see the automatic scheduling of a Senate vote on any SCOTUS nominee if a nomination is allowed to remain in committee for a period longer than 180 days, a clear response to the tactics used in 2016 by Republican Mitch McConnell to block the advancement of Merrick Garland in the Obama era.

Additional provisions, explained

The bill introduced by Wyden would also take the unusual step of growing the number of federal judicial circuits to 15 in total, something which would create another 100 district court judge positions and over 60 openings at the appellate level.

One of the legislation's elements that could attract at least some bipartisan support deals with the financial disclosure and transparency measures that would apply to Supreme Court justices.

The new rules would mandate annual IRS audits of justices' tax returns, the results of which would be publicized, and they would also require any high court nominee to produce three years of returns before being considered for confirmation.

Wyden's bill also attempts to address what has become an increasingly contentious subject in recent years -- requests for recusal -- by permitting a two-thirds vote of a court's membership to compel a colleague's recusal from a given case.

Odds of success in question

Though support for radical Supreme Court and other judicial reforms are popular on the left, with President Joe Biden and current Democratic Party presidential hopeful Kamala Harris reportedly having signaled her support for elements of Wyden's plan and of another option separately proposed by Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse (D-RI), the odds of their passage are currently slim.

Even though recent polling suggests that American voters do favor the implementation of an ethics code for SCOTUS justice by a substantial margin, far fewer are interested in an expansion of the number of jurists on the court, rendering a bill as expansive as Wyden's more akin to a political pipe dream than a potential reality anytime soon.