The recent leak of a draft opinion that would overturn Roe v. Wade has sparked discussion about changes to the Supreme Court’s operations and structure.
The idea drawing the most attention is expanding the court beyond nine members. People on the left say an expansion is necessary to rebalance the court after Republican presidents and senators have ensured a conservative majority for years to come. The right considers “court packing” a political ploy that would damage the institution.
But there are other potential reforms that advocates suggest would improve government transparency, reduce partisanship and strengthen the Supreme Court.
Term limits
The Framers determined Supreme Court justices “shall hold their Offices during good Behaviour,” which was determined to mean may serve for life if they so choose. By removing justices from the election process, in theory, their selection would be separated from the political process.
However, as the confirmation process has become politicized and even a significant portion of presidential campaigns, some observers have advocated establishing term limits for justices.
A leading proposal calls for justices to serve 18-year terms. Under that plan, justices who complete their terms become “senior justices” who could serve on lower courts and occasionally fill in at the top court.
Gabe Roth, executive director of Fix the Courts, explained the proposal in an op-ed for The Fulcrum:
The elegance of the 18-year plan is that it allows each president to nominate two of the nine justices per four-year term, with no exceptions. In the case of an unexpected vacancy — because of death or medical emergency, say — a senior justice would fill in until the expiration of the term of the departed justice. For example, when [Antonin] Scalia died four years ago, the court would not have been reduced to eight justices; rather, the most recently retired justice, John Paul Stevens, would have taken his place until the next justice was confirmed.
Cameras in the courtroom
C-SPAN began broadcasting live congressional proceedings in 1979, but nothing similar has ever been tried in the Supreme Court. Same-day audio recordings of oral arguments are made available by the court, but the United States is a video-centric nation (not just TV, but now with YouTube, Tik Tok and more), and reformers believe live video would make court proceedings more accessible to the American public.
Opponents counter that live video could negatively impact court proceedings because justices might play to the camera. (Some people have argued that C-SPAN has made Congress worse because lawmakers may be inclined to plan their remarks around soundbites rather than reasoned debate and collaboration.)
Many of the current justices expressed interest in, if not outright support for, cameras in their courtroom when they were up for confirmation. Since then, some have changed their minds.
Here’s Clarence Thomas during his 1991 confirmation hearings:
'I have no objection beyond a concern that the cameras be as unobtrusive as possible...It's good for the American public to see what's going on in there.'
But by 2006 his opinion had shifted:
'It runs the risk of undermining the manner in which we consider the cases. Certainly it will change our proceedings. And I don't think for the better.'
Code of ethics
The executive branch, including the White House, as the Office of Government Ethics. The House and Senate each have their own ethics committees (as well as the independent Office of Congressional Ethics for the House). And the judicial branch follows the Code of Conduct of United States Judges … except those rules do not apply to the Supreme Court.
Reform advocates argue that an ethics code should be created for the justices to protect against improper behavior.
Fix the Courts, an organization devoted to nonpartisan reforms to the federal courts, see this as a critical component of its plan, writing on its website:
“Research compiled from Fix the Court points out that while none of the justices has committed a removal offense, all nine of them are culpable of various ethical oversights, from leaving assets off their annual financial disclosure reports to speaking at partisan fundraisers to ruling on cases despite credible conflicts of interest.”
A number of bills have been introduced in Congress to create an ethics code for the Supreme Court, but most of them have not progressed. However, the For the People Act, which passed the House before getting blocked by the filibuster in the Senate, would direct the Judicial Conference of the United States to craft an ethics code that includes the Supreme Court.
image of U.S. President Donald Trump is displayed on a digital billboard in Times Square in New York on April 8, 2026.
Trump is stuck between two realities. Neither serves the American people
Normally, I worry that events may overtake a column. But not so with the Iran war.
I don’t worry about running afoul of a headline or Truth Social post from the president because what is said about the situation is no longer very relevant to the reality.
On April 8, Nick Catoggio, my Dispatch colleague, dubbed an earlier stoppage with Iran “Schrödinger’s ceasefire.” This was a reference to the famous thought experiment by the physicist Erwin Schrödinger, who was trying to explain the weirdness of “superpositionality” in quantum physics. A cat in a box is both dead and alive at the same time until you open the box. Schrödinger meant to illustrate the absurdity of the idea that particles aren’t any one thing, but a “cloud of probabilities.”
The Trump administration is stuck in a word cloud of probabilities of his own making. The war is over. The war is on. The war isn’t a war. We have a deal, but we don’t have a deal, but we’re about to have a deal. We destroyed Iran’s military. No, we left it intact. We want regime change. No we don’t. We already accomplished it. We “obliterated” Iran’s nuclear program a year ago. We had to go to war in February to prevent nuclear war. The Strait of Hormuz is open, closed, or something in-between. No deal without “unconditional surrender.” Let’s make a deal!
This everything-all-at-once vibe can be disorienting, particularly since most Americans didn’t have a war with Iran on their bingo cards until the shooting had already started. President Trump didn’t prepare the country or consult with Congress beforehand because he thought it would all be a smashing success in a matter of weeks.
The miscalculation that started it all: killing Iran’s Supreme Leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, and much of Iran’s senior leadership, on the first day of the war. To “the great proud people of Iran, I say tonight that the hour of your freedom is at hand,” Trump announced on Feb. 28. “When we are finished, take over your government. It will be yours to take. This will be probably your only chance for generations.”
I support regime change in Iran and shed no tears for Khamenei or his goons. But when you start a war by killing the regime’s top leaders, it’s not unreasonable for the remaining ones to conclude that you really intend regime change.
Khamenei was a murderous fanatic, but he was a fairly cautious one. He liked to threaten closing the Strait of Hormuz or attacking our regional allies, but he was reluctant to actually do it, fearing it would invite a regime change war. The mullahs and IRGC goons believed, not unreasonably, that if they lost their grip on power, they’d be lynched by the Iranian people they’ve brutalized for decades.
By starting with a regime change war, Trump removed any reason for the regime not to go for broke. When you have nothing to lose — particularly when you are a millenarian religious fanatic — a Persian Alamo strategy makes a lot of sense.
So Iran closed the Strait of Hormuz and attacked its neighbors.
But it turns out this wasn’t the Alamo. In the contest of wills, Trump blinked. The Iranian regime’s tolerance for punishment proved — so far — to be greater than Trump’s and that of our gulf allies. Militarily we could finish the job, but that would require ground troops and much greater economic turmoil. In a conflict Trump launched unilaterally without the prior support of Congress, NATO or the American people, Trump doesn’t have the political capital for that.
But that’s only half the problem. Trump wants the war over, but he doesn’t want to pay — militarily, economically, politically — what that would cost. So he wants to make a deal that ends it. But there is no deal available that wouldn’t come at an equally undesirable cost. Any deal that looks like what President Obama struck with the Iranians would be too embarrassing to bear. But the Iranians are convinced that they can get just such a deal, and they’re willing to drag things out as long as it takes.
The result: Trump’s in a box of his own making. He thinks he can talk his way out by simply asserting a reality that doesn’t exist. When the financial markets get nervous, he announces a breakthrough that is, at best, a possibility. When the Iranians agree to a deal that looks similar to one Obama might negotiate, Trump goes back to his threats.
It can’t go on forever. But I’m sure it’ll last until long after this column is forgotten.
Jonah Goldberg is editor-in-chief of The Dispatch and the host of The Remnant podcast. His Twitter handle is @JonahDispatch.