Under pressure from his party’s base to pack the high court with additional justices, President Joe Biden is following through on his campaign promise to create a commission to examine possible reforms to the Supreme Court and the federal judiciary.
President Franklin D. Roosevelt, a Democrat, tried to pack the Supreme Court in the 1930s after it struck down a series of his legislative initiatives as unconstitutional, but lawmakers from his own party viewed the move as a political bridge too far when the public expressed its disapproval of court-packing. While court-packing legislation died, the justices later dropped much of their opposition to Roosevelt’s government-enlarging New Deal legislation and upheld the various laws’ constitutionality.
