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It’s no secret that the Supreme Court has become an extension of our partisan politics over the past decade. The decisions handed down in the 2026 session prove just how broken the court has become and how unrepresentative it is of the views of the American people. Reactions show how little confidence the public has in its fairness.
Future Democratic majorities in Congress — perhaps starting as soon as January — should make repairing the court and reforming the judicial branch a priority to make sure it does not continue to operate as a partisan and retrograde institution.
One need look no further than the court’s recent decisions for evidence of its partisanship and dysfunction.
President Trump’s handpicked court continued to gut the Voting Rights Act, greenlighting Republican gerrymandering to tip the scales of this upcoming and future elections, and undermining a half century of precedent and the hard-fought battles of the civil rights era. After professing their abiding respect for precedent during confirmation hearings, a partisan majority of the court has no trouble striking down any precedent when it disfavors GOP control of Congress.
Trump’s justices have allowed federal immigration agents to arrest and detain individuals, without the requisite standard of cause, based on their apparent ethnicity, perceived jobs or spoken language. This nod to the conservative agenda to roll back civil rights also required the disparagement of any precedents to the contrary.
The court gave Trump the power to fire heads of independent agencies, including federal trade commissioners, clearing the way for him to assert political influence on additional independent government bodies intended by Congress to be insulated from such pressures. This required overturning more than nine decades of precedent. Only when it came to the Federal Reserve was the court willing to sustain the independence of one of these bodies, and then only because wealthy financial interests (and the economy more generally) collided with the personal whim of the president.
A full third of the court is now so extreme that it almost allowed Trump to overturn the Constitution with an executive order, which attempted to claim he alone had power to do away with birthright citizenship.
These attacks on the Constitution and decades of established American law have not taken place in a vacuum. Their backdrop is a festering culture of corruption in our courts — with undisclosed luxury gifts and glaring conflicts of interest, and members of our judiciary refusing to recuse themselves from cases tied directly to their benefactors’ financial or political advantage, or their own.
It is not surprising then that the American public has abandoned reverence for those who are meant to be our independent arbiters of the law. Chief Justice John Roberts claimed that his court would merely “call balls and strikes.” But decisions to overturn Roe vs. Wade and dismantle the Voting Rights Act have led more than half of Americans to disapprove of how the court is doing its job, with almost half of Americans believing that the court “is ruling on President Trump’s policies based on ideology, rather than the law.” Who can blame them?
Democrats should unite around a simple and deeply popular agenda to fix the court.
We must enact term limits for Supreme Court justices to promote predictability and stop institution-defeating gamesmanship around depriving presidents of hearings and votes on their nominees.
We need to expand the number of justices sitting on the court to reflect the expanded size of our nation and to prevent this court — now otherwise fixed for a generation in its steadfast partisanship — from further destroying the hard-fought system of rights the American people have come to rely on.
And we must create an enforceable code of ethics, bringing this court under the same set of rules of accountability as other leaders privileged to be in public service.
I’ve drafted legislation to build on these three core tenets, to ensure transparency and ethical standards across the federal judicial system.
After being called out for repeated conflicts of interest, the Supreme Court established a toothless code of conduct in November 2023 with no external body to enforce it. Under these unenforced and unenforceable guidelines, justices act as their own ethical arbiters with no accountability.
To rectify this, I’ve proposed extending the conflict of interest statute that already applies to executive branch employees to include federal judges and justices, preventing them from participating in cases relating to their own financial interests.
So long as judges and justices know where their investments lie — and therefore where they may profit — it is fair to question the impartiality of their decisions. The law I propose, called the Justice Is Blind Act, would require judges, justices and their immediate family to put their financial assets into a blind trust. Members of Congress should be required to do the same, if not divest their assets entirely.
Lastly, we need to bring much-needed transparency to our judiciary. By expanding the Freedom of Information Act to the judiciary, we would create an explicit right of public access to administrative records so the American people and the press can access judicial complaints, investigation records, meeting minutes and more.
Passing these reforms will be difficult in a Congress where Republicans have become rubber stamps for the president’s priorities, but it’s important for Democrats to push for legislation that tells the country what we stand for, and what we’re willing to do when we flip majorities in Congress and take back the White House.
If Justice Samuel Alito retires soon — as some have speculated he will — that may open the door for Trump to appoint a fourth Supreme Court justice — and yet another political ally poised to advance the president’s agenda rather than the rule of law or justice. This should be a warning to all Americans of how much is at stake if we don’t act to fix this system.
These proposals would help restore balance and credibility to the court. It has been packed, and it should be unpacked. It has become an agent of partisan and cultural warfare, and it should become a neutral arbiter of the law. It has shredded precedent to achieve political objectives, and it should respect precedent once more. It has become beholden to wealthy financial interests, and it must disentangle itself from the personal economic benefit of its decisions.
The American people’s trust in the judicial system might be battered, but when Democrats control Congress again, they will have the opportunity to rebuild that trust and should not miss what could be the last best chance to restore some measure of integrity to the courts.
Adam Schiff represents California in the U.S. Senate.
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Ideas expressed in the piece
The article argues that the modern Supreme Court has evolved into a largely partisan institution, noting the sharp rise in 6-3 ideological splits where the six Republican-appointed justices routinely outvote the three Democratic appointees in major cases on voting rights, immigration and presidential power.[1][7][9]
It contends that recent decisions weakening the Voting Rights Act, particularly the Louisiana v. Callais ruling, illustrate how the conservative majority has made it easier for Republican-led states to draw maps that favor white voting blocs and reduce Black representation, effectively entrenching GOP control of Congress and state legislatures.[2][10][16][17]
The piece argues that immigration rulings have given federal agents expansive authority to arrest and detain people based on perceived ethnicity or language, and that decisions on executive power have allowed the president to fire leaders of independent agencies, thereby eroding decades of precedent intended to insulate these bodies from partisan pressure.[3][11]
It asserts that these doctrinal shifts are occurring against the backdrop of an ethics crisis at the court, citing undisclosed luxury travel, potential conflicts of interest and a pattern of justices declining to recuse in cases involving benefactors or personal financial stakes, all of which have undermined public confidence in judicial neutrality.[8][15][22]
The article notes that public trust in the court has eroded substantially, pointing to polling and term analyses showing widespread disapproval and a growing perception that decisions are driven by ideology rather than law, especially after landmark rulings on abortion and voting rights.[1][9][21]
In response, the piece urges Democrats to make Supreme Court reform a top priority when they regain congressional majorities, framing such efforts as essential to preventing further erosion of civil rights protections and democratic norms.[4][12][18]
The article calls for statutory term limits for justices—often discussed in the 18-year range—to restore predictability in appointments, reduce high-stakes confirmation battles and end strategic manipulation of vacancies, aligning with reform proposals that enjoy broad public support.[6][8][19]
It advocates expanding the number of justices on the court, portraying this as “unpacking” a bench that has already been effectively “packed” by President Trump and Senate Republicans, and aligning with existing Democratic proposals to grow the court from nine to thirteen members.[14][18][20]
The piece emphasizes the need for a binding and enforceable ethics code for Supreme Court justices, arguing that the voluntary code adopted in 2023 is “toothless” because justices still police their own conduct; it echoes reform plans that envision independent enforcement, stricter gift and stock-trading rules, and mandatory written recusal explanations.[8][15][22]
It further proposes extending federal conflict-of-interest statutes to cover judges and justices and requiring blind trusts for their financial assets—and those of immediate family members—so that no justice participates in cases where personal investments could benefit, paralleling ethics reform ideas circulating in Congress and among watchdog groups.[8][15][22]
The article urges expanding the Freedom of Information Act to the judicial branch to guarantee public access to administrative records such as complaints, investigation files and meeting minutes, arguing that transparency measures would help rebuild trust and allow journalists and citizens to scrutinize the court’s internal operations.[8]
Overall, the piece suggests that Democrats, once back in power, have both an obligation and a narrow window to restructure the court—through term limits, expansion, ethics and transparency reforms—in order to transform it from an engine of partisan and cultural warfare into a more neutral arbiter that respects precedent and is less beholden to wealthy interests.[6][8][14][18]
Different views on the topic
A Washington Times column characterizes Democratic plans for term limits and court expansion as an attempt to “rig” the Supreme Court, arguing that forcing conservative justices off the bench or diluting their votes would amount to a partisan power grab that undermines the court’s independence and the constitutional separation of powers.[5]
A policy paper from Senate Republicans similarly portrays proposals to expand the court from nine to thirteen justices as classic “court-packing,” contending that adding seats to secure liberal outcomes would destroy the institution’s legitimacy and invite future retaliatory expansions whenever control of Congress or the White House changes hands.[20]
Critics highlighted in Newsweek’s reporting on term-limit proposals describe these reforms as a “long shot,” emphasizing that lifetime tenure for federal judges is embedded in Article III of the Constitution and warning that statutory term limits could be unconstitutional or would at least require an amendment—a politically daunting prospect.[19]
Some legal analysts cited by Reuters and Harvard Law School argue that, while the court has a pronounced conservative tilt, its recent term also included decisions that checked President Trump’s authority, including limits on control over monetary policy and trade, suggesting the institution does not operate as a straightforward partisan instrument.[3][13][17]
A Brookings analysis of Louisiana v. Callais explains the decision in doctrinal terms, noting that the majority held the Voting Rights Act cannot obligate states to create additional majority-minority districts when their maps already comply with the act, and that such requirements could violate the Equal Protection Clause—framing the ruling as a constitutional interpretation rather than an effort to dismantle civil rights.[16]
Commentators in The New York Times and CNN note that, although many high-profile rulings have split 6-3 along party-line appointments, a significant share of the court’s docket is decided unanimously or with cross-ideological coalitions, arguing that the perception of a wholly partisan court can overlook areas where justices converge on legal principles.[7][21][9]
Some scholars and reform advocates stress that the more pressing issue is the court’s outsized power rather than its current composition, urging Congress to “disempower” the court through jurisdictional limits or fast-track legislative responses to judicial rulings, rather than focusing on adding seats or replacing justices—an approach that diverges from the article’s emphasis on court expansion.[8][18]
Institutionalists and judicial conservatives caution that sweeping structural changes—such as expanding the court, imposing term limits, or extending FOIA into internal judicial administration—could politicize the judiciary further, chill candid deliberations among judges, and weaken the norm that courts stand apart from day-to-day politics, potentially exacerbating the very legitimacy crisis reformers seek to solve.[5][13][21]
Some observers point out that the Supreme Court’s existing ethics framework, including the 2023 code of conduct, already represents a step forward and argue that more aggressive measures like blind trusts or congressional enforcement mechanisms could infringe on judicial independence or risk pulling the court into the same partisan ethics battles that engulf the political branches.[8][15][22]
Opponents of court expansion also argue that efforts by one party to remake the court’s structure in response to unfavorable rulings could set a destabilizing precedent, normalizing the idea that the size of the court is a political lever to be adjusted whenever major decisions are unpopular, which they say would erode public faith in the judiciary more than any single controversial opinion.[5][20][21]
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