Why are there still only nine Supreme Court justices?

[iamthewalrus_3]

@HurricaneDitka

Is it urgent enough that you’d like to see the current Congress enlarge the SCOTUS and the current President pick a bunch of additional judges, and have them approved by the current Senate?

I’m not convinced that a larger court is necessary, so I won’t answer that in the affirmative, but if we did feel that a larger court was a good idea but wanted to protect against packing the court, a reasonable way forward would probably be something like a Constitutional Amendment that increased the size of the court 1 seat every N years and (to avoid a slight Senate majority holding seats unfilled, some kind of declining threshold for “advice and consent” the longer the seat remains open.

[Saint_Cad]

@Velocity

In the three or four threads on this topic, I still have yet never seen an answer to the question of how the D’s intend to pack the Court without expecting similar Republican escalation down the road.

I think it is a corollary of the thinking “When my party does X it is defending democracy and totally appropriate. When the other party does X it is evil incarnate and the worst thing any group of people have ever done.”

[Guinastasia]

Wouldn’t a better idea be term limits for justices? In the past, there have been actual senile judges on the court.

[Exapno_Mapcase]

@SamuelA

https://www.uscourts.gov/news/2016/12/20/just-facts-us-courts-appeals
*
Fewer than 9 percent of total appeals resulted in reversals of lower court decisions in 2015. Appeals of decisions in U.S. civil cases and prisoner petition appeals had the lowest rates of reversals (See Table 2 and Chart 3).
*

Thanks for the cite. I’m not sure that really answers my question, though.

The issue is the one I raised before. The Supreme Court grants cert to no more than 2% of the cases sent to it. Those not retried, by definition uphold the decision of the lower courts. So I’m not sure how the percentage of reversals is calculated for them.

I’m also not sure how this works in the courts of appeals. I don’t think they can deny cert in the same way, though. Therefore the expectation is that most cases would simply uphold the lower courts. But that’s somewhat misleading. The more legally important cases might have a very different pattern.