Professor Named to President’s Supreme Court Commission

President Joe Biden has named University of Virginia School of Law professor Caleb Nelson to the Presidential Commission on the Supreme Court of the United States.

According to Friday’s press release, the commission will analyze arguments for and against Supreme Court reform. Qualifications for membership and the size of the court are among the topics the commission will examine. The commission will consider both the merits and legality of particular reform proposals.

The commission — co-chaired by Bob Bauer ’76, a professor at New York University School of Law and former general counsel to President Barack Obama — will hold public meetings to hear the views of other experts, and groups and individuals with varied perspectives. Biden’s executive order directs the commission to complete its report within 180 days of the first public meeting.

Nelson, who joined the faculty in 1998, is the Emerson G. Spies Distinguished Professor of Law, and Caddell and Chapman Professor of Law. He teaches civil procedure, federal courts and statutory interpretation. He is also author of a casebook on statutory interpretation.

Nelson is a past winner of UVA’s All-University Teaching Award as well as the national Federalist Society’s Paul M. Bator Award and an elected member of the American Law Institute. He was the most-cited law school professor in U.S. Supreme Court opinions for the 2016-17 terms, according to a study of academic journal citations. He clerked for Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas.

Other commission members include former U.S. Judge Thomas B. Griffith ’85, now special counsel at Hunton Andrews Kurth; former UVA Law professor Jack Goldsmith, now a professor at Harvard Law School; and Professor Bertrall Ross of the University of California, Berkeley, School of Law, who taught a class at UVA Law this fall.