Can the Supreme Court be Fixed?

Bill Blum has had a rich and multi-faceted career as a lawyer, administrative law judge, novelist, public speaker, college lecturer, and legal journalist. As an attorney prior to becoming a judge, he was one of California’s best-known death-penalty litigators. Thirteen of his cases resulted in precedent-setting published appellate decisions, six decided by the California Supreme Court and one by the United State Supreme Court. Along the way, he made stops as a public defender, a deputy in the civil division of the California Department of Justice, and an associate in a private law firm that worked on the Smith Act and Hollywood Ten cases. His work as a journalist has been recognized with awards from the Los Angeles Press Club, the American Society of Business Publication Editors (ASBPE), and the Western Publishing Association. He specializes in covering the important and complex relationship between law and politics, focusing on the U.S. Supreme Court, constitutional law, and the rise of right-wing authoritarian movements in the U.S. and abroad.

Hruska joined ACS in 2021 and serves as the Senior Advisor for Communications and Strategy. Before joining ACS, Hruska served as the political director for the ACLU of New Hampshire, where she helped repeal the death penalty, enact bail reform and advance trans lived equality. She previously served in the U.S. Department of State during the Obama administration, working to promote democracy and human rights in central Africa and coordinating U.S. sanctions policy. She started her career on the local level, working for a Los Angeles city councilman. Hruska currently serves as a board member of the NH Coalition to Abolish the Death Penalty. Hruska received her J.D. from George Washington University Law School, and her B.A. from the University of Southern California. She was born and raised in New England.

The American Constitution Society for Law and Policy (ACS) is a 501(c)3 nonprofit, nonpartisan legal organization. Through a diverse nationwide network of progressive lawyers, law students, judges, scholars, advocates and many others, our mission is to support and advocate for laws and legal systems that strengthen our democratic legitimacy, uphold the rule of law and redress the founding failures of our Constitution and enduring inequities in our laws in pursuit of realized equality.

Chelsey Davidson is a progressive advocate with significant experience in election protection and environmental advocacy. She is the former Senior Research Director of the Stanford-MIT Healthy Elections Project. While at Stanford Law School, she produced policy memos and documents ranging from divestment strategies, the impact of climate change on human movements, and violations of the Vacancies Act in the Trump administration for the Steyer-Taylor Center for Energy Policy, the Administrative Conference of the United States, and the International Refugee Assistance Project. Chelsey has worked on cases for indigenous tribes and environmental non-profits while a clinical student at Stanford’s Environmental Law Clinic. In 2019, she externed for the Honorable Beth Labson Freeman in the Northern District of California. Chelsey has a J.D. from Stanford Law School and a B.A. from the University of Richmond in Leadership Studies and PPE (Philosophy, Politics, and Economics).

Their mission is to inform the public about the danger that the Supreme Court poses to democracy, and about the viability of court expansion—adding seats to the Court—as the only strategy that re-balances the court after its 2016 theft.