Court-packing of SCOTUS is an idea that’s gaining more and more traction among Democrats, including Kamala, Beto, Ocasio-Cortez and Warren (links: hereand hereand hereand here)
There are several ways in which this would be disastrous. 1) Republicans will just do the same thing on an even bigger scale when they get the chance years down the road, 2) it ruins the legitimacy of SCOTUS as the SCOTUS becomes perceived as nothing but a political arm, 3) it’s simply flat-out partisan. Sure, McConnell blocking Garland was partisan, but that was wrong, too.
Until something major changes – like amending the Constitution to make 9 or 18 year terms for SCOTUS, or a minimum age of ~70 or so – SCOTUS is an overtly political institution, and will be treated as such. As long as this is the case, the Democrats should try to make sure they have just as much partisan influence on this political institution as the Republicans, IMO. And this may help push the country to the point that we’ll actually come together and amend the Constitution.
The alternative may be that someone starts shooting SCOTUS justices, since that could gain one side a significant advantage. Then we’d be in big, big trouble.
Okay, I had to dig through all those cites to find some actual quotes. It doesn’t look like anyone is actually campaigning on this issue. They’re being asked about it and giving a generic answer that basically says “we’ll look into it.”
But the very fact that they’re giving it consideration is significantly different than in the past. In, say, 2000, if Gore had been asked about court-packing, he’d probably have said “uh…what? No.”
But it*** shouldn’t ***be. The whole point of the 3 branches of government is that the first two (presidency and Congress) are for politics but the Supreme Court+judiciary is supposed to serve as referees.
Your comment is akin to, “Sports team tries to bribe referees, dog bites man.”
Yes, but this has spectacularly failed. The SCOTUS is a political institution, whether we like it or not. I hope that this could be changed, but it would require a Constitutional amendment. Asking the Democrats to pretend that it’s not a political institution just helps the Republicans, and I’m not particularly eager to do that.
Not wrong, necessarily, just irrelevant to my point about the legislative filibuster.
“court packing” means expanding the size of the Court. The Court’s size was set (at 9) by the Judiciary Act of 1869. If someone wanted to add a 10th or 11th (or additional) justices to the Supreme Court, they’ll have to change the law with a piece of legislation. President Trump and the Senate Republicans can’t just nominate ACB and confirm her and suddenly have a SCOTUS with 10 justices.
There is a law setting the size of the Supreme Court at nine. It’s only a law, not part of the Constitution, and so it could be changed by a mere act of Congress (as opposed to an amendment), but it would still need that act of Congress. Which would require nuclear retaliation in the form of eliminating the Republican filibuster. But that’s pretty much a given, since the Democratic filibuster is already dead: Democrats would be insane, upon taking back the Senate, to leave the rules at “only Republicans are allowed to filibuster”.
I think you’re confused about which filibuster is dead. The filibuster for nominees (executive and judicial branches) is dead, but the legislative filibuster is still very much intact. There’s not really any such thing as the “Democratic filibuster” or the “Republican filibuster”
ETA: the rules don’t say “only Republicans are allowed to filibuster”.
It would undoubtedly have been advantageous, at least in the short term, to have nuked it in 2017. The Senate’s legislative filibuster was the main obstacle to the Republicans enacting their agenda in 2017-2018.
What sort of calculus do you think McConnell used when deciding not to do that against the wishes of Trump who kept tweeting about getting rid of it to push his agenda through.
It’s ok, you can answer. Everyone already knows why, so you can say it.