Legal AF by MeidasTouch - Trump Plan to Pack Supreme Court Foiled by the Voters and Congress

Episode Date: October 9, 2026

Popok is joined by the Brennan Center’s CEO and President Michael Waldman at this critical tipping point, where Trump doesn’t know what the issues are that concern the midterm voter, but Supreme Court reform is high on the list! https://www.brennancenter.org/solutions-stronger-democracy https://www.brennancenter.org/our-work/policy-solutions/six-solutions-fix-supreme-court Subscribe: https://www.youtube.com/@LegalAFMTN?sub_confirmation=1 Become a member of Legal AF YouTube community: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCJgZJZZbnLFPr5GJdCuIwpA/join Become a member of the Legal AF Substack: https://michaelpopok.substack.com/20off Follow Legal AF on Bluesky: https://bsky.app/profile/legalafmtn.bsky.social Follow Michael Popok on Bluesky: https://bsky.app/profile/mspopok.bsky.social Subscribe to the Legal AF podcast feed here: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/legal-af-by-meidastouch/id1580828595 Subscribe to the Intersection with Michael Popok podcast feed here: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/the-intersection-with-michael-popok/id1818863274 Subscribe to Unprecedented with Michael Popok and Dina Doll podcast feed here: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/unprecedented-by-legal-af/id1867023089 Subscribe to Court of History with Sidney Blumenthal and Sean Wilentz podcast feed here: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/the-court-of-history/id1867022920 Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Welcome to a special edition of Legal A.F. There are so many things that are on the ballot at the midterms. We're running out of fingers to count them. But one of them that matters to our audience here on Legal A.F is the United States Supreme Court. We've heard our audience cry out for term limits. Ethical standards applied to them. Maybe adding additional members to the United States Supreme Court, but something has to give. because the United States Supreme Court is not held in high regard. It's in its lowest ebb right now in the recent Gallup polling. And no amount of justices like Alito who may or may not be doing their swan song right now

and trying to defend the court is going to change that. Something has to happen. Some things may be limited by the Constitution. Some things may be limited by political will. But there is a not-profit public interest group which is well known to our audience, the Brennan Center for Justice at NYU Law School. And I want to bring on Michael Waltman, the president and CEO,

because the Brennan Center has been out there with their own proposals about how to fix what is the problem named the United States Supreme Court. Now is the time, as we count down to the midterm, people understand what's at stake and what does it mean to vote one way or the other when it comes to the United States Supreme Court. Let's bring in Michael. Hi, Michael.

Great to be with you. and great to have you here briefing our audience. So why don't just start with, I mean, you've got the, you know, your bona fides as the leader of the Brennan Center. Of course, you were also on Joe Biden's Blue Ribbon panel in 2021 about Supreme Court reform. But why don't you start with who and what is the Brennan Center? And then let's turn to what are the proposals that the Brennan Center

is out there making in a kind of an agnostic way about how to fix a problem on the United States Supreme Court. I'll start with the Brennan Center rather than the commission, which we were literally instructed at the outset at that commission not to reach conclusions. And we didn't. A government agency that works as intended. So it was useful. But the work at the Brennan Center is really pointed straight at this.

The Brennan Center, as you know, is a nonpartisan law and policy institute. We work to strengthen to reform and when necessary to defend the system. of democracy and justice in this country, so they work for everybody. And we were actually started over 30 years ago in honor of by the family and clerks of this late Supreme Court Justice William Brennan, who was the great liberal justice on the Warren Court, a time rare in our country's history where the Supreme Court was actually a force for progress. And we're affiliated with NYU Law School.

And we believe very strongly that, and of course we all see this on the campaign trail, too. is a need for and there is also a hunger for change in the country. And there is a clear demand for what comes next, not just for sort of people being against Trump or whatever, but really a sense of what can we do to fix our system to make sure this kind of thing doesn't happen again. This kind of error doesn't happen again. And we believe we've been issuing a series of policy recommendations, we call it our solutions for a stronger democracy on topics ranging from corruption to the upcoming one is presidential power. And we very strongly believe that the Supreme Court of the United States has to be part of the set of institutions that need reform and new

thinking. The U.S. Supreme Court has vast power and minimal accountability. It is nine government officials, they wear robes, but they're not actually clergy or wizards, nine government officials appointed for life and not elected, and they have extraordinary power that they are exerting really over the other two branches and without accountability. And so we've published something that we're calling six solutions to reform the Supreme Court. It's part of something we have called the Colberg Center at the Brennan Center, just focusing on Supreme Court reform. And these are ideas for ways to change the Supreme Court that could really make it more credible, bring it back in line with the public and help restore the credibility that it needs

to be able to do what we want a Supreme Court to do. One of the interesting things, Michael, that our audience has learned by being with us here on Legal A.F is how little of the structure of the Supreme Court is found. in the Constitution itself. I like to joke that for those that are on the Supreme Court that count themselves as originalists or textualists who say you always got to go back to the Trapped and Amber Constitution to find meaning right in a dead dead document and yet their own powers are not found and the structure is not really found in the Constitution. That's through judiciary acts, acts of Congress, and some famous case law like Marbury v. Madison, right?

Well, the part of the Constitution that deals with the Supreme Court and all the federal courts is one-tenth the length of the parks dealing with the democratically accountable branches, Congress and the presidency. And that was not just a matter of wording. That was what the, what the framers thought was the right balance. And only over this, centuries and years, has the Supreme Court attained, you know, in a lot of ways, not just co-equal branch, but really a super legislature over the other branches. And they only have this power because we give it to them. They only have this power because at some level they've earned it, but even more because we have ceded that power, and Congress especially has

seat at its power. Under the Constitution, it is clear, and this has been true throughout the country's history, Congress has tremendous power to write the structures, the responsibilities, the shape, and the rules for the Supreme Court. And you hear Supreme Court justice is like Alito say, oh, you know, that's terrible. No one thinks that Congress has that power, but it's nonsense. And actually, Justice Elena Kagan felt compelled to go out and say, you know, Alito says Congress doesn't have the power to do this. Of course they do. And that's everything from setting the size of the court to writing ethics rules and much more. And Congress can do much more to use its power to bring the court into alignment with the Constitution. And that's one of the foundations

of the six recommendations, if you will, by the Brennan Center, is that Congress finally exert its power. I mean, I like to joke on legal AF that until, you know, a few decades, decades ago, the Supreme Court lived in the basement of Congress. I mean, they lived in their parents' basement. I'm not sure the founding fathers, and we could debate this another time, really saw them as a co-equal branch of government, given how short shrift they were given in the Constitution. They didn't even have their own building for a long, long time. You know, historians debate whether they intended for there to be judicial review, in other words, that the courts could strike down the law if it was contrary to the Constitution.

I actually think there was a lot of judicial review on their minds. This was a lot of judicial review. This was something they saw as superior to the British system. But it wasn't the way we have it now. And you know, Marbury, you mentioned Marbury versus Madison. Whenever the Supreme Court does some big ruling, they try to out Marbury v. Madison and quote it, you know, to cloak themselves in its aura. But that was the first time that the court said

it had the power to strike down a law passed by Congress. They didn't do it again for decades and decades. And the second time was the Dred Scott decision. So it was only used very rarely, and people thought it was a dangerous power. And it's only recently, and some of this, of course, comes after the period of the Warren Court, where Justice Brennan was on the court, where the Supreme Court was doing really important work to bring the country in line with the Constitution, where the Supreme Court sort of took on more of this role. But even the Warren Court very rarely struck down a law passed by Congress. It was really looking at the ways the states were abusing the rights of its own citizens, of the state's people. But when you think of the Roberts Court, and especially the crusade it has been on for now over two decades,

to demolish the laws passed by Congress around democracy, laws that the Constitution very specifically gives Congress the power to set, campaign finance laws, voting laws, cases like Citizens United, like Shelby County, and all these other cases, This Supreme Court has been every bit as activist, aggressive, and imperialist as what the conservatives used to say the liberal Supreme Court's were. You know, one of the things that that has happened over the years is conservatives, political conservatives, to their credit, understood the importance of the court. And they ran campaigns, political campaigns. They made it a campaign issue. They talked about it. They said what kind of justices would be appointed.

and all those other kinds of things. And liberals, progressives, Democrats, generally speaking, were mum. I think that has changed. I mean, when you look at this campaign going on right now out there and look at the Democrats in particular, people are talking about this when they talk about corruption. I was really struck by the fact that Congressman Jamie Raskin and Senator Sheldon Whitehouse, who are the rank Raskin is the ranking member

and they very well could be the chairs of the House and Senate Judiciary Committee very soon, certainly if the Democrats were in the House, Raskin will be chair of that committee. We're out in Iowa speaking at the Polk County Steak Fry about as Americana soaked a thing if there is on behalf of the Senate candidate,

Josh Turek, talking about Supreme Court term limits to a cheering crowd. And I think that's a real change for Democrats, for liberals, for progressives, being willing to talk about this stuff the way conservatives have been forever and ever. Yeah, it's very interesting, especially among the audience here, because as they know from the funnel system, most justice in this country is done at a level and levels much below the Supreme Court. Most cases are resolved at the district court level, if we're talking about federal, maybe the appellate court level, and very few,

Although that just because it's a very few doesn't mean they're not very, very important to our civil liberties and civil rights and things. But most justice is done well below the United States Supreme Court that takes maybe 100 cases now a year plus the shadow docket of another 20 or 30 cases. The shadow docket is them reaching into the rest of the court system to try to very often, unfortunately, try to stop them from doing what they should be doing, which is upholding the law. I used to go on hiate. We have a show on Legal A.F. called Unprecedented, which we do once a week round up about the United States Supreme Court. I basically went on hiatus during the summers because there was nothing going on until September we do a preview of the next term.

Now it's 24-7. People are like, what do you mean the courts opening the first Monday of October Popak? You've been telling us about rulings every week for this entire year. And let's not also forget, although it's a whole different subject, there are 50 state courts systems and so much of the law of criminal law and everything else, but so many constitutional provisions can be upheld at the state level. It is to give one example, 49 of the 50 state constitutions have stronger protections for voting rights than the U.S. Constitution does.

And one of the missions we at the Brennan Center have is to encourage state courts to step up and enforce their own constitutions, you know, rather than just following. just following the lead of the federal courts. All right, I'll bite. I'll bite, Michael, which is the 50th state that doesn't have the same protection, the better protections? I think it is Arizona. We'll check.

Weird because Arizona actually has a very good set of laws around all of these things. So I may not, I don't want to slander Arizona, but we'll double check that. But while I've got Michael Waltman, the president and CEO of the Brennan Center here, Let's turn to the things that the Brennan Center is putting out there as part of the marketplace of ideas, some of which has already been picked up. There's almost 90 co-sponsors of the Term Act related to term limits for the United States Supreme Court justices. But you've got this broken down into category, some of which need legislative drive,

some of which there's maybe a constitutional issue about it or not. So why don't we walk through what the proposal is? Sure. So again, this is in a publication. Folks can read on our website. It's called Six Solutions for Supreme Court Reform to fix the Supreme Court. The first one that we talk about, as you say, is term limits. We think this is the most important step.

It is something that would be vital to bring accountability to the court of the U.S. Supreme Court is the only Supreme Court but one in the country, all the state courts and all the constitutional courts of other democracies have either an age limit or a term limit. And it basically reflects the value that nobody should have too much power for too long. And it certainly could be done by constitutional amendment. We believe also it could be done by statute, as you mentioned, the Term Act in the House of Representatives, which would basically say that after 18 years, justices become senior justice. is their role changes and the cases they hear change. And, you know, this idea of a senior judge is something that exists already. We think this should also be coupled with a regular appointment.

Every two years, a president gets to appoint somebody to the court. And that can help drain a lot of the venom and we hope, you know, calamitous partisanship out of the confirmation process. But that also would add new blood to the court. And here's the interesting thing. And we, you know, term limits is something we've talked about a lot, you've talked about, and people on Capitol Hill are talking about. And it's really interesting.

I think people, your viewers might not realize this. It's wildly popular. The most recent Fox News poll on this subject showed 78% support for Supreme Court term limits. So obviously, that's a lot of Republicans and independents as well as Democrats. It is one of the most popular ideas that's out there. No, nobody's under any illusion that, you know, it'll be a hug-upon if it gets to Capitol Hill. But I think it's an idea whose time has come. So that's the first idea that's-

Before you leave the first, how does it work then with the staggering of the term limits so that you also have somebody new coming on every couple of years? Who falls off the conveyor belt? So there's different ways of structuring the term limits and actually different bills do it. different bills do it a different way. Some apply it in effect retroactively, meaning, hey, Clarence Thomas, your 18 years are up, you know, you're a senior justice now. And others are prospective only, meaning new justices who get appointed are 18-year justices. Either way, Congress has the power, because it has the power to set the membership of the court,

to say, now the president gets another appointment every two years. That, that, that, is easy to do. And so, you know, there's there's, there's kind of minutia and details about how it would work and what if a justice leaves office in the middle of a term or what if the Senate refuses to act or there's other, a lot of complexities like that. But it's basically pretty simple to add a new justice every two years. And that would grow the size of the court under some of these, at least for a while. But it's a while. But it's a little bit of it would ultimately have a full court of people with 18-year terms. Well, and let me, Michael, let me paint a picture here,

and then you and I can talk about it. And for some of our audience, it's a nightmare. You've got Clarence Thomas that in several months will set the record for the longest, it's hard to believe I'm saying these words, the longest serving Supreme Court justice in history is going to be Clarence Thomas in the next few months. And at the same time, you've got Alito flirting with retirement publicly. And what strikes fear in the hearts of our audience is that Donald Trump is going to replace the two of them with two 40-year-olds without term limits and without senior status who were therefore going to lock in this ultra-right-wing majority for a couple of generations.

That scares the crap out of our, I'll tell you straight, out of our audience. And one thing that's not in the Brennan proposal, but I want to talk to you about it, is actually expanding the court. to address some of these issues. Like I've only half joked in some of my and some of my hot takes recently, how does this sound everybody? Today, the United States Supreme Court and Chief Justice Katanji Brown Jackson and a seven to six ruling restored a woman's right to choose. That sounds pretty good to my audience, by the way. And, you know, again, I think it's important for people to understand just how reactionary this court is on so many things. You're going to

exactly right that Congress has the power to set the size of the Supreme Court. And it has increased or shrunk the size of the court at various points, although, you know, in truth, not since the Civil War. So in the modern era, it's been nine, except it wasn't nine when Merrick Garland was nominated. And for a year, the U.S. Senate blocked iteration of President Obama's nomination of him to replace Scalia. So suddenly it wasn't the end of the world to not have nine. But it's definitely legal for Congress to do this. It has done it before.

And there's a lot of momentum for it. And you hear a lot of people talking about it. And it was noteworthy, for example, when two weeks in a row, Congressman Clyburn, who's a very esteemed and not particularly radical leader of the Congress and Jamie Raskin, both when I meet the press and talked about court expansion. So there's certainly a lot of people talking about it. There's arguments that people have made against it that it would lead to a retaliatory spiral. I always encourage people to read about FDR because when one deals with the Supreme Court and reforming the court,

there is a very significant latent and not always so visible public sentiment around wanting to have independence of the courts. And we saw it, for example, the backlash in countries like in Israel when Netanyahu tried to do things that were seen as politicizing the court. And there were, you know, hundreds of thousands of people demonstrating on the streets. And so I think people looking at Supreme Court reform generally, we have to be really, you know, aware of the potential, the way these things play out politically. But I think there's a, you know, it's an encouraging thing to me that there's so much discussion and so much momentum for a range of things. The Brennan Center has not supported court expansion insofar as there would be some expansion of the court

and some versions of the term limits. But people support term limits. The broad public supports term limits. Not so much because they don't like Clarence Thomas or they don't like the Dobbs decision or something like that, but because of a basic sense that this highly powerful institution needs to be accountable. But I presume, Michael, the Brennan Center wouldn't be against

If the will of the people is to add a few more seats, I don't think the Brennan Center would be against it, would they? I would be very interested to see that happen. Right. No, I don't, I mean, there's no, you know, the Republicans brought a constitutional amendment to the floor of the House a few weeks ago saying it's nine, and that was defeated by the entire Democratic caucus. And Jamie Raskin correctly said, you know, this is a decision for Congress.

Congress to make and invest for the people. Yeah, absolutely. I mean, when, you know, when you talked about FDR and the court packing scheme was a lot easier for FDR to have a little muscle behind that, he controlled 75 percent. I think he had 75 votes in the Senate. So I think it, but he lost and it destroyed. He lost and he basically destroyed his second term. Yeah. Yeah. You know, now one argument is he lost the fight because there was, it turns out a massive backlash, even against the most popular president in American history, as the Supreme Court was about to strike down Social Security, there was still this backlash. On the one hand, on the other hand, and this is something law professors talk about all the time in historians,

the Supreme Court, which had been striking down all the social progressive legislation, they backed. Right. They certainly stopped. He had lost the battle, but it won the war. Yeah. Yeah. So let's turn the other thing that is very interesting to my office. audience is ethics because we've spent a lot of time reporting on things that Clarence Thomas has done, things that Alito has done or Cabr. Thomas can be on the court a long time because he's in its Winnebago and, you know, very relaxing. Right. I mean, even things like, you know, somebody had to sell their summer house and it had to be sold to somebody that had a confederalist

society links. And then it was only because of public outcry that they started reporting these things on federal forms that they were required to fill out. So the ethics is very, very important. Like my audience, especially around the world, can't understand why every level of the courts, state and federal, the judges are subject to canons of ethics, but not the highest court of the land because they take this, this Pope approach that they're infallible. That's exactly right. And until quite recently, the Supreme Court was the only court in the United States, state or federal, to have no code of ethics. And then they published a very toothless, frankly, code of conduct, which they said, we're only doing this because of a misunderstanding

by the public about our ethics. That was the word they use misunderstanding. And so they now have gone from having no code of ethics to having a weak code of ethics with no enforcement. And what there needs to be is a code of ethics just the same as other courts have and a mechanism for enforcing it. And there's so many different ways, and this can be done emphatically, we believe, by Congress passing legislation. There's so many ways that this could be done. You could have retired justices or senior justices, you know, be the deciders on ethics questions or questions of who has to recuse themselves, say, from a case. In other words, who has to step aside from case because of a conflict of interest. You could have lower court judges. There's any number of ways

to do this, lots of institutions in our society and in government, and in the courts do this kind of thing. It's only the Supreme Court that doesn't. So this is, this should be low-hanging fruit for the next Congress. It is, of course, wildly popular, but it's really hard to even justify why it doesn't exist already. Yeah, certainly there's a legislative will to get this done. As you've said, Jamie Raskin, who's going to take that gavel with a certain amount of guns. Cheldon White House is very on fire, as you know, on all the tracing the money, you know, behind the nominations and the people who litigate in front of the court. So I think there's going to be a lot of interest in Congress. You know, Congress should people get the gavel who are so inclined?

They should be looking at the court just the same as in any other institution. Yeah, you'll be interested to know. Senator Whitehouse's interview with me is up from yesterday, and I asked them to come back because we were talking about something else about Supreme Court reform. But as soon as I ended my interview over the late summer with Senator Cory Booker of New Jersey, he said to me, I want to come back and talk about Supreme Court reform.

I said, absolutely, Senator Booker, whenever you're ready. There is tremendous momentum for it. If you look at the reaction to the Calais decision, the terrible ruling destroying what was left of the Voting Rights Act, that landmark civil rights law. The first reaction that the Congressional Black Caucus had, for example, and they have enormous moral sway in Congress, among other things, they said, now we really need to due term limits in Supreme Court reform. Hakeem Jeffries said we need major Supreme Court reform. There is tremendous momentum in the Congress.

Now, that doesn't mean it happens overnight, but there's been a real shift. I'll mention a few of the other solutions that we have. I was going to say, hopefully they'll use the Brennan Center blueprint for a lot of the legislation. So what's next on the list? Well, the next one is about the shadow docket. As you know, this is when the court rules before a case is ripe in a way. They reach into the judicial process. And often without explanation, often without even signing their names to something,

and very often without really hearing from all the friend of the court briefs and the other things that you get with a big ruling, they make these rulings. And what has been, you know, why are people upset about this? Well, first, honestly, I think it's because it's got the name the shadow docket. That sounds really scary and ominous to people. Alito says we should call it the emergency docket, but also because they have been using it now to give Donald Trump. victory after victory in staving off the rulings where lower court judges often very courageously but correctly have upheld the law against the illegal stuff that Trump

has been trying to do and and they have gone in and stopped have undone some of these rulings there are limits to what Congress can do around the shadow docket Congress can set jurisdiction parameters for the court but Congress for example, and this is what we talk about in our paper, certainly could require transparency, could require that they give reasons for why they're doing what they're doing, could require them to sign their names. So in our... How about oral argument? How about have oral argument? Yeah. For example. Now, you know, there are times when you don't really want to have

things slowed down that way, like a death penalty appeal or something like that. But again, If the goal is for both sides to be heard and if this is a major public body, then you want to have procedures where it's not only for show that you have these two sides arguing and everybody gets to be heard and people on the outside get to hear the arguments and the public gets to weigh in. So shadow docket reform, but more important, I would say term limits and ethics. And then some other things that we talk about in here, they're not as much on the agenda right now. I'll give you one example. We talked in all of this about the role of Congress, and we actually have a solutions publication about Congress and making Congress stand up on its own two feet and do its job better. But so much of this is about the abdication by Congress of its role.

One of the things Congress can do is a lot of the really bad rulings are rulings where Congress could fix them, could respond by passing. laws to fix the mistake that a Supreme Court made or a ruling made by the Supreme Court. So you might remember the Lilly Ledbetter Act. This was a ruling, really sort of a terrible ruling with the Supreme Court. It was about 15 years ago. Made it much harder for people to sue for workplace discrimination. And they said, okay, Congress, the ball's in your court. That's what Ruth Bader Ginsburg said in her dissent. So Congress, passed a law, making clear, no, people do have the ability to sue over many years for

workplace discrimination. I mentioned the Calais decision, the Voting Rights Act. That followed on the Shelby County decision that I'm sure you've talked about a lot, which was in 2013, where the Supreme Court demolished the most effective part of the Voting Rights Act. That was a statutory ruling. Congress could emphatically pass legislation to modernize the Voting Rights Act under the terms the Supreme Court said would be okay, it just hasn't done it. And there are so many things where the rules of Congress and the processes of Congress get in the way. So we think that there ought to be a fast track. You know, there are a lot of laws that set the way Congress votes on different things, whether it's, Congress can actually undo regulations passed by

the promulgated by the executive branch. Congress can has a certain way of voting on trade agreements or on military base closings, there ought to be rules that say that if you want to have a vote on a Supreme Court ruling that's a statutory ruling, you get the vote on the floor within 60 days or something like. And Senator White House is sponsoring a bill that is right up that alley, right? That's what he's sponsoring because we do talk a lot about where the Supreme Court throws up its hands and says, oh, major question. It would have to have been Congress making a ruling on that.

And so we're not going to find it in the current statutory analysis. Bingo, time for Congress to go pass a law in that area. Or as you said, and then I see it another way, too. How many times have we seen the Supreme Court kick a case out of court because they find that the plaintiff doesn't have standing? It's non-justiciable, as they say. It's that political question or something. My audience says, well, who could bring that case?

And I'm like, Congress, Congress could bring a case against the president for some of these issues, but they don't do it because, well, right now it's in the control of the same party as the president. They could bring a case or they could cut off the funding for the Office of Management and Budget that illegally eliminates USAID or something like that. Congress has vast, vast storerooms of unused power. And you're right that the Supreme Court is being very mendacious. It's talking out of both sides of its mouth. On the one hand, it has this new doctrine called the Major Questions Doctrine

that says on regulatory matters, it was in a major climate change case that they put this forward, saying, look, this is just too big for a regulatory agency to do something. like this is so big, it really needs to be done by Congress, the people who are elected by the public, which sort of sounds reasonable. At the same time, the Supreme Court has struck down law after law passed by Congress with barely disguised condescension. So when the Supreme Court heard the Shelby County case in the courtroom, it was pointed out that the Congress had passed the Voting Rights Act, had reauthorized it. And in the Senate, in 2006, not a century ago, very recently, the The vote was 98 to nothing.

And Senator, Justice, excuse me, as a Freudian slip, Justice Scalia said, oh, well, that just proves. They weren't really, they weren't paying attention. They were afraid to vote against it, as opposed to saying, you know, the body of government that the Constitution charges with doing this kind of thing has spoken. The Supreme Court, only every once in a while actually is deferential to Congress. they're really about grabbing power for themselves and then at times giving the president power. But Congress needs to step up. So making it easier for them to pass laws responding to misguided Supreme Court rulings,

that's another idea. Another thing they ought to do is require cameras in the courtroom. You know who's always for cameras in the courtroom? The Supreme Court justices during their confirmation hearings. And then they get in and then they suddenly discover it's not such a good idea. Well, on that point, we run the audio of major Supreme Court oral arguments in real time on legal AF. We get several hundred thousand people just on our feed. And it's just, you know, it's just a dead screen.

We try to tell people who's talking at any particular time. There's so many people that want to hear what's happening there. There's even an AI entity out there that is doing it. I don't know if you've seen this. It has the faces talking? Yeah, it has like John Roberts. Look, as you know, that's new that you could hear the, it would be broadcast live or on not much of a delay. That's actually a new thing.

And that does take away the worry that, you know, you'll get justices or lawyers grandstanding because it's happening already. So it seems like a kind of not that important thing. to do, but actually I think it would, what it would do is it would reinforce that this is just a bunch of government officials making decisions, not a mysterious body that has puffs of incense and reveals the true meaning of the Constitution. Yeah, I think that would help. The other thing that would help is we have too many people on the United States Supreme Court that came out of the executive branch. We need a few that came out of the legislative branch. We need a couple of like

former Congress people who were lawyers or senators to go on to the Supreme Court who understand the balance that is supposed to exist. I mean, the executive branch people, you know, the robbers, right? And they weren't even senior executive branch people by and large. They were sort of functionaries. The only really senior, the two people who had fairly senior jobs, interestingly, and I was a top White House aide to Bill Clinton for both terms. One of them was Elena Kagan, who was actually a very senior domestic policy advisor to Clinton. And the other was Kavanaugh, who was the staff secretary, which sounds like a boring job. But it sounds like he's getting coffee, but he's actually he's in charge of what papers get to the president.

And so it's actually a pretty significant job. But in the old days, and I'm going to have to unfortunately go in a minute, in the old days, the Supreme Court was made up. of governors and senators and former attorneys general and law school deans and other people, major public intellectuals like Lewis Brandeis and other people like that who really are the kind of people who've lived lives. They aren't just climbing up the Federalist Society ladder in law schools and then appellate federal judges. And the, you know, you had, Earl Warren was the governor of California. You had people who'd run federal agencies. You don't have a any of that now. And I'll tell you from my experience with Bill Clinton, he actually had a really

deep desire to appoint people to the Supreme Court who were not judges. He felt strongly, you learned a lot being a politician. The last politician to be on the court was Sandra Day O'Connor, who had been the Republican leader of the Arizona legislature and really actually knew how to, you know, she wasn't an ideologue and knew how to kind of craft a majority. partly based on that experience. And Clinton tried and tried to appoint non-judges, and it never worked. He offered the Supreme Court Cee twice to Mario Cuomo, the governor of New York, and he turned it down. He tried to appoint Bruce Babbitt, who had been the governor of Arizona and was the Interior Secretary.

He tried to appoint him, and that nomination got messed up because of a fight between environmentalists and landowners over. who would be the next interior secretary or something like that. And for a time, he wanted to appoint George Mitchell, who negotiated the Good Friday Accord, the former Senate majority leader. And anyway, he never could get it to work. So he wound up appointing Ginsburg and Stephen Breyer, who did many good things, but were very much of this kind of appeals court judge pipeline. Bottom line is all of these things really have the same themes in common. We, the people, have a legitimate role in bringing accountability to the Supreme Court. Reform of the court properly is a subject for reform and for action. After this election, there's so much demand for change. It's after periods of corruption,

after periods of abuse. That's when we get change in this country. That's when we get reform. It doesn't always happen. But when it happens, that's when it happens. That's when it happens. So it's on all of us to make sure that it happens now and to make sure that the Supreme Court is part of what we're looking for solutions. And people can read our solutions series at the Brennan Center website. Michael Waltman, president and CEO of the Brennan Center, giving our audience the talking points they need. When they go to the midterm election, they're already voting about Supreme Court reform. Today, Donald Trump was asked, what is the number one thing that's on voters' mind at the midterms? And he responded, I don't know. However, our

Rodgans does know that Supreme Court reform is very, very important. Michael, love to have you come back on as we get closer to the election and on the other side of it to talk about these reforms in further detail. Very happy to. Okay. Michael Popak here on Legal A.F. Take a moment. Hit the free subscribe button on our pro-democracy channel.

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