Hey,

I wrote this piece for The Hill because the Supreme Court crisis isn't abstract anymore. It's the foundation of every other political crisis happening right now. Immunity for Trump. Gutting Chevron. Striking Roe . A court that answers to no one is how everything else gets locked in permanently.

I have a plan to fix it, but plans require the right tools and resources to enact. Will you chip in $10 to help me keep fighting to restore the integrity of the Supreme Court in Congress? [[link removed]]

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There is no institution that has lost more trust among the American people since 2020 than our judicial system.

This is not surprising. The legitimacy of the court depends upon it being seen as non-partisan arbiters of the law, and ever fewer Americans see them as such. Sen. Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) started this when he allowed only 28 percent of President Obama’s nominees to be confirmed in the final two years of his presidency — and that was before his double standard with respect to the Supreme Court nominations of Merrick Garland and Justice Amy Coney Barrett.

But ultimately, the justices on the Supreme Court deserve much of the blame. All assured the Congress during their confirmation hearings that they were committed to judicial precedent, the Constitution and the rule of law. But judicial precedent was ignored when they overturned Roe v. Wade and the Chevron deference. The Constitution was ignored when they deleted the first 13 words from the 2nd Amendment and effectively struck Section 3 from the 14th Amendment. Defending the rule of law was ignored when they granted Donald Trump near total immunity from the law.

There are dozens of other examples. But in all cases, these were decisions based on politics, not principle.

Depending on your politics, you may agree with those rulings. But precedent and the Constitution matter because they remind us all, regardless of our politics, that the rule of law is paramount. Lose that and we risk losing the consent of the governed. Martin Luther King Jr. wrote of our “moral responsibility to disobey unjust laws.” Meanwhile, immoral actors will be the first to take the law into their own hands when trust in the rule of law collapses. This is the road to anarchy.

Chief Justice John Roberts understands this, which is in part why he insists that rule of law remains strong. But he only has to make that point now because so many others disagree.

So, what should we do?

First, don’t assume that the court will reform itself. They have believed since Marbury v. Madison that they alone have the wisdom to interpret the Constitution. The Supreme Court’s very architecture is designed to represent a “temple of the law,” suggesting that the law is some fundamental, discoverable truth that sits outside of the political debates that shape the other two branches. That of course isn’t true — but the beneficiaries of shared mythologies can’t be expected to fight for truth.

And that’s OK! Because Congress — with the support of the executive — has the tools to fix all of this. It’s time to put them to work. Here are five proposals, ranked by impact and speed of implementation:

1. Congress has the power of the purse. For fiscal 2026, the Supreme Court has asked Congress for $166 million — a 25 percent increase above its 2025 budget. In light of recent events, Congress should use their authority to — at a minimum — make a significant portion of that appropriation contingent on meaningful ethics reforms.
2. Congress has authority to limit the jurisdiction of the Supreme Court under Article III, Section 2, Clause 2 that says that the appellate jurisdiction of the court shall be subject to “such exceptions and under such regulations as the Congress shall make.” I have introduced legislation to effectively eliminate all political influence over appellate decisions by shifting responsibility to a panel of judges, randomly selected for each case from our senior circuit judges. The Supreme Court would then be limited to its stipulated “original jurisdiction” — matters relating to ambassadors and disputes where one of the states is a party.
3. Congress gave the court the ability to decide what cases it will hear (“grant cert”) via the Judiciary Act of 1925. One of the quickest ways to reduce the political influence of the existing court would be to take away their ability to decide which of the cases on which lower courts have already ruled could be considered for reversal.
4. Congress may be able to impose term limits on the justices. There is some debate on this point because the Constitution says that sitting justices serve “during good behavior” which many have taken to imply that — in the absence of a Constitutional amendment — justices will keep their job until death, retirement or impeachment.
5. Congress set the size of the court at nine justices in the Judiciary Act of 1869. Congress could expand the court again, although this only provides a check if the president responsible for nomination does not share the current justices’ ideological biases.

Congress has the power, and the responsibility to restore the integrity of the Supreme Court. Let’s use it.

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— Sean
PAID FOR BY CASTEN FOR CONGRESS
Casten for Congress
P.O. Box 132
Downers Grove, IL 60515-0132
United States
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