来源：《华盛顿邮报》
刊登日期：2021年4月10日
Fulfilling a campaign promise, President Biden announced Friday the establishment of a commission on possible reforms to the Supreme Court. Composed of attorneys, legal academics and former judges, the panel includes conservatives as well as progressives; and it will examine “the Court’s role in the Constitutional system; the length of service and turnover of justices on the Court; the membership and size of the Court; and the Court’s case selection, rules, and practices,” according to a White House statement. Though it will analyze, not propose, policy, it is Mr. Biden’s initial formal response to those within his party who say that the answer to recent Republican success in appointing a six-member, life-tenured Supreme Court majority should be an expansion of the nine-justice body, with the new positions to be filled by Democratic appointees.
为了履行竞选承诺，拜登总统星期五宣布成立一个委员会，负责最高法院可能的改革。根据白宫的一份声明，该委员会由律师、法律学者和退休法官组成，包括保守派和进步派；它将审查“最高法院在宪法制度中的作用；最高法院法官的服务年限和更替；最高法院的成员和规模；最高法院的案件选择、规则和惯例。虽然该委员会只是分析而不是提出政策，但这是拜登对党内人士的首次正式回应。共和党最近成功任命了第六名保守派大法官，这样，保守派占据了由9名大法官构成的最高法院的绝对多数，要知道，最高法院大法官的任期是终身的。民主党认为应该对最高法院扩容，新增的大法官职位将由民主党任命者填补。
The political likelihood of growing the court is not high. Still, as a rallying cry on the left, the idea is not going away and thus is still worth scrutinizing. It would essentially respond to Republican politicization of the court with Democratic counter-politicization. That would be understandable, given GOP Senate leader Mitch McConnell’s manipulation of the process to hinder consideration of President Barack Obama’s nominee in 2016.
最高法院扩容的政治可能性并不高。不过，作为左派的战斗口号，扩容这个想法并没有消失，因此仍然值得仔细研究。它本质上是民主党对共和党将最高法院政治化的反政治化回应。考虑到参议院共和党领袖米奇·麦康奈尔在2016年阻挠对奥巴马总统提名的审议，这是可以理解的。
Justice Stephen G. Breyer urged in a Harvard Law School lecture Tuesday that “those whose initial instincts may favor important structural change . . . such as forms of court-packing, think long and hard before they embody those changes in law.” Speaking for nearly two hours, and drawing on his long experience in the law, including nearly 27 years as a Democratic president’s liberal appointee on the high court, Justice Breyer, 82, noted that the court’s effectiveness hinges on its legitimacy, which hinges on the perception that “the court is guided by legal principle, not politics.” That perception would be eroded if one party changed the court’s long-standing nine-member size to further policy objectives.
大法官布雷耶周二在哈佛法学院的一次演讲中敦促说，“那些最初的直觉可能倾向于重要的结构变革的人。例如法院扩容的形式，在法律上体现这些变化之前，请仔细思考。”他讲了近两个小时的话，凭借他在法律方面的长期经验，包括他在最高法院作为民主党总统任命的自由派大法官的近27年经验，82岁的布雷耶大法官指出，最高法院的有效性取决于其合法性，而合法性取决于“最高法院受法律原则而非政治指导”这一认知。如果某个党派为了实现进一步的政策目标，改变最高法院长期以来的9人规模，这种认知将受到侵蚀。
The justices’ rulings obviously reflect their ideology and political preference, but not in a simple, deterministic way, Justice Breyer argued. He pointed out several cases in which the current GOP-dominated court had ruled contrary to President Donald Trump’s interests or to policies favored by Republicans generally.
布雷耶大法官认为，大法官的裁决显然反映了他们的意识形态和政治偏好，但并不是以一种简单、确定的方式。他指出，在几起案件中，目前由共和党主导的最高法院做出的裁决违背了总统特朗普的利益，也违背了共和党普遍青睐的政策。
Encouragingly, the broad mandate Mr. Biden has assigned the commission allows it to examine what is a valid area for potential Supreme Court reform: replacing life tenure, instituted in 1788, at a time of much shorter life expectancy, with an 18-year term. That would drain some of the intensity from Supreme Court politics by providing both parties with foreseeable, regular opportunities to nominate justices. It would allow presidents to nominate the most qualified justices, rather than looking for the youngest nominees. Term limits should be high on Mr. Biden’s commission’s agenda.
令人鼓舞的是，拜登赋予该委员会的广泛授权，使其能够研究最高法院潜在改革的合理领域：用18年的任期取代1788年设立的终身任期，当时的人均预期寿命要短得多。这将为两党提供可预见的定期提名大法官的机会，从而从最高法院政治中抽走一些紧张的气氛。它将允许总统提名最有资格的大法官，而不是寻找最年轻的被提名者。任期限制应该在拜登领导的委员会的议程中占据重要位置。