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Four months later, Justice Barrett sits on the Supreme Court, President Biden
Democrats have little time to act and the question of which plan to pursue looms large. This debate typically revolves around one task: identify the policy that best balances political reality with legal rigor. Why? Because Congress will get only “one shot” before the court itself weighs in. And by then it may be too late for Congress to start over.
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This legal-political balancing act poses a dilemma: popular plans get watered down to preempt legal concerns while controversial policies dominate the debate based on their constitutional pedigree. For example, Fix The Court’s plan would require justices to take senior status after 18 years (a widely popular approach), but the plan exempts sitting justices to avoid potential legal issues. Take Back the Court, meanwhile, argues that packing the court is the only viable option because anything else might be invalidated.
Allison Shelley / NPR
Nina Totenberg is NPR s award-winning legal affairs correspondent. Her reports air regularly on NPR s critically acclaimed newsmagazines
All Things Considered,
Weekend Edition.
Totenberg s coverage of the Supreme Court and legal affairs has won her widespread recognition. She is often featured in documentaries most recently
RBG that deal with issues before the court. As
Newsweek put it, The mainstays [of NPR] are
Morning Edition and
All Things Considered. But the creme de la creme is Nina Totenberg.
In 1991, her ground-breaking report about University of Oklahoma Law Professor Anita Hill s allegations of sexual harassment by Judge Clarence Thomas led the Senate Judiciary Committee to re-open Thomas s Supreme Court confirmation hearings to consider Hill s charges. NPR received the prestigious George Foster Peabody Award for its gavel-to-gavel coverage anchored by Totenberg of both the original hearings and the inquiry into Anita H