Jeff Shesol writes that President Biden should follow FDR’s example in fighting the conservative majority on the Supreme Court.
Absent a vacancy to fill, presidents have little ability to change the direction of the court. That is as it should be. But as Roosevelt showed, they can change the conversation — and with it, over time, public opinion. In a similar spirit, Mr. Biden should view adverse rulings as opportunities to deliver his own dissents — to expose the designs of majority opinions, demystify them, debunk them, show whose interests they serve and whose they do not, and provide a countervailing view of the Constitution.
I am not sure that Biden is up to the job Shesol is assigning him. But it’s in any case the wrong lesson to learn from FDR’s success with the courts. The right lesson is that Biden would get the judiciary he wants if he first wins a landslide and a Senate supermajority, and then uses the normal nomination-and-confirmation process to name a supermajority of the Supreme Court.