Since 1869 the number of Supreme Court justices has remained at nine, with, I believe, only FDR’s failed attempt to raise the number even trying to change this.
Since it simply takes a congressional vote to raise the number, how come it hasn’t happened fat more often (when a party held a strong position in both houses)?
Because neither party wants the president to appoint justices that favor the other party.
The far more important question is why there are still only 435 Representatives.
The answer to why they haven’t increased the size of the court lately that neither side wants to establish the precedent of increasing the size of the court.
What upside are you seeing in increasing the number of justices? If your party currently controls the WH and you can get the congressional votes to allow POTUS to appoint more members to a larger SCOTUS then you can pack the court with people sympathetic to your cause but then what? You’ve made a point of violently offending a significant percentage of the country to ram through an agenda you couldn’t get through standard legislative means. Whta’s the long term gain and what’s the cost to achieve that gain?
To put it another way - if adding more justices to SCOTUS is a good idea when your party gets to select the new members, why is it still a good idea when the opposition party gets to pick them?
FDR tried to add more justices, didn’t go well.
Because it’s like nuclear warfare. Once you cross the threshold, your adversary then feels to do so - and in a much bigger way.
Pack the SCOTUS with six additional justices, and your opponent might pack it with 20, 40 or 60 when they get their turn to do so.
- They could get more work done. They do more than just vote.
- Here’s a proposal to up the number to 179 (sort of). Kavanaugh confirmation: How to save the Supreme Court - Vox
[Moderating]
This seems to call for opinions, so off to IMHO.
The case presented in the linked article, at first read, seems interestingly plausible, but…there’s something there, something in the back of my mind that I can’t quite seem to catch hold of to bring to the fore that bothers me about it. There’s something about the whole idea proposed in that article that is wrong and I’m percieving it but not seeing it
Right. An enormously popular President (the guy who managed to get elected four times (three times in peacetime) got an enormous backlash for even floating the idea - so everyone else stayed away from it.
If Democrats take the Senate and the White House next year, court-packing would be a wise move on their part.
What works is the odd number so there’s no tie. 9 seems plenty enough as I thought 7 would be apt.
Why do you think that would be “wise”? It would be the end of the Supreme Court as we know it.
That Vox article about rotating judges overlooks what I consider to be a major problem. Specifically, the Supreme Court currently does not accurately represent the American people. In fact, it has never accurately represented the American people during my lifetime.
Let’s start with political affiliation. In six of the last seven federal elections, votes for Democrats outnumbered votes for Republicans. Logically, one would expect there to be more Democrats in the Supreme Court than Republicans in the Supreme Court. But this is not the case. Four of the current nine were appointed by Democrats, five appointed by Republicans. Before that, it was 3D+6R. Before that, it was 2D+7R. Democrats have never held a majority in the court at any time in the last half century. Also consider that roughly one third of American voters do not belong to either of the two major parties. One could say that roughly a third of our country is completely unrepresented on the Supreme Court.
The Vox article proposes to have five Democrats, five Republicans, and five chosen randomly. On what basis does this author believe that the split should be exactly equal? Even if you think the voters are exactly split now, why assume that it will stay that way in the future? There should be a mechanism to compensate for future shifts.
Now look at gender. Since 2010, we’ve had 6 men and 3 women. Before that, it was 7 men + 2 women (since 1993). Before that, it was 8 men + 1 woman (since 1981). Before 1981, it was always 9 men and zero women. Men currently hold (and have held, since day one) a supermajority in the court. It’s moving towards half and half but still hasn’t got there. Meanwhile, women voters outnumber men voters, and have done so in every election since 1964.
Next look at religion. We currently have five Catholic justices, three Jewish justices, and one Protestant justice who was raised Catholic. Meanwhile, the actual breakdown of Americans is 48% Protestant, 23% Catholic, 2% Mormon, 2% Jewish, 1% Muslim, 3% “other”, and a whopping 21% “none of the above”. The None’s are just about tied for second place with Catholics. But they have never been represented on the court, not once, ever.
Don’t get me started on ethnicity.
I don’t know precisely the best way to fix this problem. But my point is that the Vox proposal makes no attempt at all to fix it; in fact, it sets the political affiliation problem in stone, unchangeable til the end of time.
Does this imply that court-packing by Republicans would be a wise move this year? If so, why?
These kinds of changes are a lot like gerry-mandering - it seems to assume that we will do it just this one time, and then stop. And the other side won’t do the same thing. It doesn’t work like that.
Regards,
Shodan
And both parties know that with 9 or less they have a good chance of “getting control” (we could debate if that actually happens) back should they lose it.
Was going to post the same point. Why do court packing advocates think it is a one and done deal? If FDR had gotten his way, SCOTUS would be about the size of the HoR by now. Every majority Congress with a same party POTUS would have rebalanced the court in their favor.
In theory, one could pack the SCOTUS enough that the other side won’t ever *get *a chance to “do the same thing” back at you. Expand it big-time in one go, with nothing but lapdogs, then pass enough laws to stifle the opposition from ever winning elections again (and the lapdogs would always rule in your favor.)
But you’d need numerous zealots in your side in the Senate to make it happen first.
Slight thread hijack here but would the process be the same if the Congress wanted to reduce the size of the court? Say they wanted to go from nine justices back down to seven, is there a mechanism for this or are we in complete uncharted waters? Obviously this move would be a complete political firestorm and a clusterXXXX of epic proportions. The question of which specific justices don’t need to bother showing up for work Monday morning alone would be a political soap opera worthy of a daytime Emmy.
Say Congress chooses to bite the bullet and reduce the size of the court, consequences be damned. Is this move even legally possible?