By way of background, the The switch in time that saved nine – Wikipedia, was a reversal by the Supreme Court after FDR attempted to pack the court in response to their aggressive hostility to the New Deal using the the Lochner decision, which invalidated things like the minimum wage, health and safety regulations, etc.

Well, Biden has now announced that he is creating a commission to study changes in the US Supreme Court, and that everything is on the table, including increasing the number of justices.

I don’t think that anything will come of this, but I do think that this is a fairly sophisticated way to remind the Court that the structure and staffing of the court is determined to the other two branches:

President Biden created a bipartisan commission Friday to study structural changes to the Supreme Court, giving the group 180 days to produce a report on a range of thorny topics including court expansion and term limits.

The commission, composed of 36 legal scholars, former federal judges and practicing lawyers, fulfills Biden’s campaign promise to establish such a group after activists pushed him to back expanding the court following Republicans’ rush to confirm Justice Amy Coney Barrett shortly before last year’s election. Biden has said he is “not a fan” of adding seats to the Supreme Court, but he has declined to say whether he supports any other changes to its structure.

The commission, however, is likely to disappoint liberals who are looking for quick action to blunt the court’s conservative majority, while giving the president cover to avoid wading into the contentious debate. The members are not tasked with giving Biden specific recommendations but rather providing an analysis of a range of proposed changes to the court. The executive order establishing the commission mandates that the group hold public meetings and take input from a range of stakeholders, with the report expected in October.

There are people who talk about the sanctity of the court and its non-political nature, but that has been a lie since the Bush v. Gore in 2000.

When push comes to shove, the conservatives on the court will always go with decisions for little more than their desired partisan benefit.

There are a number of important voting and redistricting decisions coming before the court shortly, and Chief Justice John Roberts has dedicated his career to keeping Black and Brown people from voting.

This is a proverbial brushback pitch directed at Roberts, and other more realist justices on the court.