Sorry, can’t figure out how to delete this wayward post.
I don’t understand. Roosevelt’s court-packing scheme failed and (according to the Wikipedia article — I am by no means an expert) greatly damaged bipartisan support for his agenda.
What do you mean that it worked?
Oh, like cancel out. Sorry, not being pedantic. I thought you meant in the “cancel culture” sense.
I guess though that Thomas’s is not the only consistently conservative vote we’d need to cancel out. Two more liberals on the court might not amount to much.
That’s an interesting article that shows both how Roosevelt won even though his scheme failed and was costly and how history is more complicated than simple wins and losses. Some excerpts:
One thing was sure—Congress would not quickly approve it.
Then came the unexpected, an about-face by the Supreme Court. On March 29, 1937, the Court handed down its decision approving a minimum wage law in Washington State, West Coast Hotel v. Parrish. The margin was 5-4, with Roberts voting with the majority. The decision effectively reversed the ruling that had invalidated New York’s similar wage law the previous June. Two weeks later, Roberts was on the winning side in five major decisions upholding the National Labor Relations Act. On May 24, the Court found the Social Security Act and related state legislation constitutional with the same five-man majority, supported surprisingly in one of the decisions by two of the Four Horsemen, Sutherland and Van Devanter. By this time, Van Devanter had announced his intention to retire, and it was clear Roosevelt would soon be able to appoint a new justice of his choice without any need for court-packing. …
Several other facts reinforced the irony. Many contemporary observers noted the timing of Justice Roberts’s apparent reversal from a swing voter against regulatory legislation to a swing voter in favor of it, a dramatic change described famously as the “switch in time that saved nine.” By all indications, Roberts had been influenced by the court-packing bill. The facts, however, are more complex. Roberts actually rendered his critical vote in the Parrish case at least two months before Roosevelt announced his plan. Chief Justice Hughes had delayed releasing the decision to accommodate Justice Stone, who had been temporarily out of action due to illness. Moreover, Roberts had never shared the substantive due process ideology of the Four Horsemen. As he stated in his 1934 Nebbia decision for the 5-4 majority upholding New York’s controls on milk prices: “Neither property rights nor contract rights are absolute.” If that was Roberts’s view nearly three years before the court-packing initiative, something else must have been going on in all those decisions that had rejected so much of the New Deal’s regulation.
Not only is court packing unpredictable, and Republicans would use the same tactic, what are you going to do if the same forces that created a 7-2 court wind up making it a 13-2 court over time? Pack it again?
As for term limits, let’s think about the insanity that would occur in a Presidential election if we absolutely knew that two or three justices were going to be term limited out in the next four years? Some things are better left ambiguous.
The answer for Democrats is obvious, but they don’t like it: Start winning more states instead of focusing on national popularity. Win enough Senate seats and you will eventually turn the court.
Of course, that would require Democrats to adopt more moderate policies, so the progressives will hate it.
The article you shared seems to back up my reading of the Wikipedia article. Here’s another quote from your article:
“Accordingly, it seems unlikely the court-packing plan played much of a role in inducing the Supreme Court to change direction. On the other hand, there is also little doubt the plan had a harmful effect on Roosevelt’s legislative program for the balance of the New Deal.”
Roosevelt’s court-packing scheme failed, but then he got lucky and the Supreme Court changed direction (and I believe a few of the older members retired and were replaced).
Am I getting that wrong?
What is success? The article states:
Yet on the doctrinal front, the administration had won the war. Beginning with Parrish, the decisions of the Supreme Court upholding government’s power to regulate set the pattern for the balance of Roosevelt’s presidency and for nearly a half century thereafter. The ideology that had stymied the New Deal and parallel state legislative efforts to control private economic relationships went into eclipse. The Court had gone through what some commentators have described as a “constitutional revolution.”
How much did the conspicuous failure of the plan hurt Roosevelt in 1938? The poor guy was reduced to a 69-23 lead in the Senate and 262-169 in the House. And he was re-elected for a third term in 1940. And a fourth in 1944. All the time with a majority of Democrats in each house.
Comparatively, the court-packing scheme is a footnote.
Appreciate you fighting ignorance.
Man, I would make it simple. Justices get $1M per year salary, they and the extended family (aunts, uncles, first cousins, kids, spouses, ad naseum) can receive zero gifts and/or renumeration until after they retire (15 year max term limit). You not willing to meet higher standards than a mainland Chinese court, then you shouldn’t be on the bench.
Tell me you know nothing about the US electoral system without telling me you know nothing about the US electoral system.
The issue isn’t policies - Democratic policies are both moderate and, in themselves, often popular with a majority of Americans. But the system is highly skewed toward Republicans such that Democrats don’t merely need to win majorities; they need to win supermajorities (sizable ones, in some areas) just to get remotely proportionate representation at all levels. And the GOP are continuing to work to rig the systems in their favor through voter suppression, increased gerrymandering and now outright trying to get any result they don’t like thrown out.
It’s funny how no one on the right ever says “Why don’t Republicans adopt policies that are popular with more Americans? Then they wouldn’t have to go to all this effort to destroy democracy.” And the reason is of course that destroying democracy in order to be able to implement policies only a tiny minority favor is entirely the point.
But court-packing isn’t going to fix that.
I think Biden should be talking about Thomas. I know it’s pointless to ask for his resignation, but as the nation’s most visible Democrat I believe he could make Thomas’ and others’ ethical lapses a theme heading into next year’s elections – something along the lines of “Republicans are nothing but amoral scum looking to cheat you out of every dime,” but maybe a little more nuanced. 
But adding three more justices just to even the votes at 6-6 – even if it could be done – isn’t the answer.
I feel this is the greatest weakness of the Democratic Party: messaging. Every day for 4 years we had Trump out there making headlines and pushing his agenda. I can’t even tell you the last time I heard Biden speak.
The OP has a great idea. How do we get the Republicans to go along with it?
Often, even with a (slim) majority of Republicans.
I just love this logic. “The Democrats should never propose anything that wouldn’t have been popular in 1937!”.
Yeah, why bother learning from past failures?
So you feel the Democrats should be opposed to gay rights, abortion rights and racial equality? All those would have been very unpopular in 1937.
There are good arguments for and against expanding the Court, but this one is just dumb and lazy.
At a rime when politics are arguably much uglier and more divisive than in 1937, and another attempt to pack the court would probably result in a Constitutional crisis and events to make Jan. 6 look benign by comparison, plus even if achieved would result in tit-for-tat actions by Republicans returning to power, it’s bizarre that any sane Democrats would risk the consequences of such action.
Learn from history or be doomed to repeat it.
It’s also bizarre that any sane Democrats would risk the consequences of not taking such action. We live in a world without any safe options.
The fact that politics are more divisive now than in 1937 is an argument FOR trying to expand the Court. No Democrat is going to vote GOP just because they don’t like the idea of expanding the Court, so the potential political downside is much less.
As an aside, we don’t actually know how popular or unpopular Roosevelt’s plan was, since modern opinion polling didn’t exist then. We know that political elites of both parties were opposed to it, but we don’t know how ordinary voters felt. The only evidence we have to go on is the fact that they re-elected Roosevelt twice by enormous margins. I’d be happy to repeat that history.
George Gallup started opinion polling about presidents in 1937, very conveniently for this thread. Roosevelt took a more than 10 point drop in approval from 1937 to 1938.
I was being partly facetious earlier. Of course the Democrats kept their leads in 1938 and beyond, but that was only because they had such a tremendous, unthinkable advantage in 1936, 334-88 in the House, 70-22 in the Senate. Any other president at at other time would have been crushed by losing 72 House seats.
Nothing in today’s political situation can seriously be compared to the fantastic popularity FDR had. The Democrats are walking the thinnest line ever, with a literally insane Freedom Caucus in the House blackmailing the Speaker and two uncontrollable Senators (Manshin and Sinema) not even willing to vote for a clean debt limit. Biden would have to out-insane Greene and Boebert to think about court-packing.
That he would entertain the idea for a minute would also be proof that he isn’t fit to be President any longer.