前副总统乔·拜登(Joe Biden)表示，如果当选，他将向两党委员会寻求对最高法院进行哪些改革的建议，称当前的制度“不正常”。
“如果当选，我将组建一个由学者、宪法学者、民主党人、共和党人、自由派/保守派组成的两党委员会。拜登在一次采访的节选中说:“我会——要求他们在180多天内给我提出如何改革法院系统的建议，因为它变得不正常了。”采访本周早些时候在特拉华州的威尔明顿录制了哥伦比亚广播公司的节目“60分钟”。
“这不是法院打包的问题。拜登补充说:“我们的宪法学者还讨论了其他一些事情，我想知道该委员会可能会提出什么建议。”
当被问及委员会的研究是否将只集中在法院的打包问题上时，拜登反驳说，有“许多选择...远不止打包。”
答案是拜登迄今为止最明确的承诺，即他将如何以总统身份在最高法院发表讲话，同时似乎在他执政的六个月里搁置了关于制度改革的决定，包括一些进步的民主党人倡导的增加法官席位。
拜登上周在费城接受美国广播公司新闻采访时说，在转移了关于他是支持还是反对这一想法的反复问题后他“不喜欢”法院打包，但是承诺美国人民会在选举日之前知道他的立场。
“他们确实有权知道我的立场，他们也有权在投票前知道我的立场，”他告诉美国广播公司首席新闻主播乔治·斯特凡诺普洛斯。
进步的民主党人对拜登在上次总统辩论前发表的最新立场不满意。
“我们不需要一个委员会来告诉我们，共和党人将在四年内窃取他们的第二个法院席位，法院通常支持压制选民的策略，这使得民主党人更难赢得选举。需求正义的布莱恩·法伦在推特上写道。
在“60分钟”的采访中，拜登说，关于如何处理法院的讨论在很大程度上是一个“活球”，并警告说，他不想把这个机构从总统到总统政治化。
“我们最不需要做的就是把最高法院变成一个政治足球，谁拥有最多的选票，谁就能得到他们想要的一切。总统来来去去。最高法院的法官会世代留任。”
在最高法院法官鲁斯·巴德·金斯伯格于9月去世后，拜登在法庭打包问题上的立场问题一直存在。当时，参议院共和党人表示，他们将推进对她的继任者艾米·科尼·巴雷特法官的确认程序，尽管在2015年3月以临近选举为由阻止了奥巴马总统的最高法院提名人。
鉴于科尼·巴雷特(Coney Barrett)过去在《平价医疗法案》(平价医疗法案)上的著作，拜登一直试图将重点放在向法院确认她的利害关系上，尤其是在医疗保健方面。
“在这场大流行中，为什么共和党人有时间在最高法院举行听证会，而不是解决当地社区的重大经济需求?我来告诉你为什么，说真的，不是夸张，我来告诉你为什么。而是要把奥巴马医改从账本上抹去。这就是原因所在，因为他们的提名人过去说过，这项法律应该被废除，”拜登周日在北卡罗来纳州的达勒姆说。
Biden, under pressure on 'court packing,' says he would convene commission on reform
Former Vice President Joe Biden says, if elected, he would turn to a bipartisan commission for recommendations on what changes should be made to the Supreme Court, calling the current system “out of whack.”
“If elected, what I will do is I'll put together a national commission of -- bipartisan commission of scholars, constitutional scholars, Democrats, Republicans, liberal/conservative. And I will -- ask them to over 180 days come back to me with recommendations as to how to reform the court system because it's getting out of whack,” Biden said in an excerpt from aninterviewwith the CBS program "60 Minutes," taped earlier this week in Wilmington, Delaware.
“[I]t's not about court packing. There's a number of other things that our constitutional scholars have debated and I'd looked to see what recommendations that commission might make,” Biden added.
Democratic presidential candidate Joe Biden delivers remarks at a Voter Mobilization Event campaign stop at the Cincinnati Museum Center at Union Terminal in Cincinnati, Ohio, Oct. 12, 2020.
When pressed on whether the commission study would center solely on the issue of packing the court, Biden pushed back, arguing there are “a number of alternatives that ... go well beyond packing.”
The answer is Biden’s clearest commitment to date of how he would address the Supreme Court as president -- while seemingly punting decisions on reforms to the system including adding seats to the bench as some progressive Democrats have advocated for, six months into his administration.
After deflecting repeated questions about whether he was for or against the idea, Biden said in a town hall with ABC News last week in Philadelphiahe was ‘not a fan’ of court packing,but committed the American people would know where he stood before Election Day.
"They do have a right to know where I'll stand and they'll have a right to know where I stand before they vote," he told ABC News Chief Anchor George Stephanopoulos.
Progressive Democrats weren't happy with Biden's latest stance, which came out just before the last presidential debate.
"We don't need a commission to tell us that Republicans are about to steal their second Court seat in four years, and that the Court routinely sides with voter suppression tactics that make it harder for Democrats to win elections. This is a punt," Brian Fallon at Demand Justice tweeted.
In the "60 Minutes" interview, Biden said discussions on how to deal with the court is very much a “live ball,” and warned he didn’t want to politicize the institution from president to president.
“The last thing we need to do is turn the Supreme Court into just a political football, whoever has the most votes gets whatever they want. Presidents come and go. Supreme Court justices stay for generations.”
Judge Amy Coney Barrett, President Donald Trump's nominee for the Supreme Court of the United States, meets with Senator James Lankford, a Republican from Oklahoma, at the U.S. Capitol in Washington, Oct. 21, 2020.
The question of Biden’s stance on the issue of court packing has lingered in the wake of the Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg’s death in September, when Senate Republicans said they would move forward with the confirmation process for her successor, Judge Amy Coney Barrett -- despite having blocked President Obama’s Supreme Court nominee in March 2015 prior citing proximity to the election.
Biden has sought to keep the focus on the stakes of Coney Barrett’s confirmation to the court, particularly when it comes to health care, given her past writings on the Affordable Care Act.
“In the middle of this pandemic, why do Republicans have the time to hold a hearing on the supreme court instead of addressing the significant economic needs of local communities? I’ll tell you why, for real, not hyperbole, I'll tell you why. It’s about wiping Obamacare off the books. That’s what it is about, because their nominee has said in the past the law should be struck down,” Biden said in Durham, North Carolina, Sunday.
