Great. He bent the court to his will and went on to win two more presidential elections.
Are there many people that are going to get worked up about gun legislation that aren’t already voting for not Biden.
What are the details? Did the Republicans give up something to prevent his packing the court?
The court knuckled under and stopped blocking FDR’s agenda.
Worse; they abandoned a strict federal view of the government (that it had no powers not explicitly delegated it) and ushered in the era of “expansive” readings, where even the most strained argument for federal jurisdiction was upheld. Thus the Interstate Commerce Clause got elevated to an almost limitless license for the federal government. And we got Wickard v. Filburn - Wikipedia, which ruled that a farmer could not grow grain on his on land to feed his own animals in excess of federally set limits.
Arguably the federal government needed and needs expanded jurisdiction in today’s United States, but gaming the rules was NOT the way to go about it.
I sometimes am convinced that it wasn’t the threat of court packing that changed the justices’ minds, but blackmail files amassed by Hoover’s FBI at FDR’s direction.
The point is that FDR wasn’t proposing packing the court just to pack the court. Packing the court was a means to an end. He achieved that end and did so without paying a price at the ballot box.
FDR’s court packing threat was fantastically successful from his point of view.
The way is already paved. Republican retaliation isn’t a bug, it’s a feature and they will keep doing it no matter what because they are absolutely bereft of any real ideas. If a SC Justice dropped dead tomorrow and Biden gave the nomination to the Republicans, they’d still retaliate against him for some other perceived sleight. It is all they know how to do. Bearing that in mind, might as well make them work for it.
So he takes two hot issues that he could waste the rest of his term answering questions about (never mind the obligatory protests), and he throws them into a long term open-ended commission, allowing him to move on and do what Presidents are supposed to do. Pure genius.
For those who worship the founding fathers, I would remind folks that George Washington packed the Supreme Court.
I think this is a poor idea: on one hand it has no chance of passage; on the other hand it will generate no votes in future elections for Democrats.
Figures… Joe talks of sending it to a commission to talk it out and see if it’s wise, someone in the Congress says, “wait, expanding the court is a power of Congress” and goes ahead and by proposing it makes the President have to come out and say outright he’s for or against it.
That’s good.
What’s wrong with expanding 9 to 13 and letting both parties each nominate two justices?
Neither side gains an advantage and if there’s a benefit to be gained from the four additional justices, it’s there.
Hard for either party to object.
Not initially, but with four extra justices, there is a higher chance of any single one retiring/dying in a given year, which would give the President more opportunities to shape the composition of the SCOTUS. Imagine (Kavanaugh + Barrett) x 2. Shudders. And that’s the scenario both parties are afraid of.
That depends. There are about 70-80 million gun owners- more than voted for either candidate. Most of them are quite moderate. As long as you are not threatening to take their guns away (a handgun for home defense, shotguns and deer rifles etc) no problem. Ban the sale of 'assault weapons"- sure. More background checks- sure. Good red flag laws- sure.
But putting every single America gun company out of business, with cities suing them them right and left using taxpayer money? That might piss them off.
The GOP showed their colors when they all voted agains Bidens very reasonable covid relief package, that was rather similar to two others, passed with flying GOP support- but that Trump was in favor of.
They will vote against everything Biden wants, no matter how much it hurts their own constituents.
Yes but the significance of any justice dying would be diluted. One justice’s death would mean only 1/13 the power of the Court at stake. Right now it’s 1/9, which is immensely weighty.
This is the wrong way to look at it, though. If the court is evenly split between “conservative” and “liberal” justices, then that one open seat means everything.
Nvm, misinterpreted what I was responding to.