The Supreme Court’s dismantling of the Voting Rights Act demands reformation of the Supreme Court. The Court has repeatedly shown an absolute disregard for the Constitution as well as the intent of Congress. In gutting the VRA, the Court ignored express Congressional instructions on how to interpret the Voting Rights Act. Congress said violations of the VRA can be shown through a disparate impact on an affected group. The Court said no, we’re going to ignore what Congress said and say that the law actually means the only way you can show the VRA was violated is if someone actually said or wrote that the intent of a voting related law (such as gerrymandering) is to be racially discriminatory. Of course, people making rules or regulations that have a racially discriminatory impact rarely admit this is what they’re doing. This article on how the VRA expanded Black voter representation gives a bit of context as to why the VRA is needed and why Congress specified the disparate impact standard. By the way, it was Ronald Reagan who signed the VRA Congressional intent clarifier in 1982, and he was not exactly a paragon of civil rights. It was that important.

This is not a one-off for the Court. The Court has repeatedly substituted its own made-up rules for the outcomes it wants. It invented immunity out of thin air for the President where none exists in the Constitution. It invented a new doctrine (“Major Questions Doctrine”) that says when Congress delegates broad authority to an agency, such as the E.P.A., that agency cannot create a regulation for a major economic or political question unless it is expressly outlined by the congressional statute. Who gets to decide whether a question is major? You guessed it, the Court. It invented another doctrine that says laws must have a “history and tradition” of being viewed as legitimate within the Constitution. The Court proceeds to then dismiss history and tradition by discarding the first part of the Second Amendment as meaningless - the part that says “A well regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State….” You don’t get much more historical in U.S. law than the original Bill of Rights. Bonus points, the Court used this doctrine to throw out a New York handgun law from 1911. Not enough history I guess.

So how does one go about reforming the Supreme Court? The Brennan Center has six good ideas:

18-year term limits for Supreme Court justices through Congress’s power to regulate the Supreme Court under Article 3, Section 2. The proposed structure would elevate a Justice to “senior status” after 18 years, and create a system where 2 Justices would be appointed per each presidential term. Critics will argue that this requires a Constitutional amendment, but the Brennan Center argues that Congress can do this without an amendment: “Congress has the authority to enact this reform by statute, consistent with the Constitution’s requirement that justices ‘shall hold their Offices during good Behaviour,’ as senior status allows justices to continue their tenure with modified duties.”
Impose a mandatory and enforceable code of conduct and ethics. Currently the Supreme Court operates on a voluntary code of ethics.
Curb abuses of the “shadow docket” where the Court makes significant rulings and policy without public hearing, briefings or written opinions.
Mechanism for Congress to respond to and/or reverse a Court decision that puts a regulatory framework around judicial review.
Improve the confirmation process and require a full vote on a nominee within a set number of days.
Allow cameras in the courtroom.

Finally, to get these reforms passed, Congress needs to abolish the filibuster, which isn’t in the Constitution, it is merely a Senate rule.