Politico likes to talk about what a great idea it would be for progressives to pack the Supreme Court. HotAir
responds:
Eh, why not? All the cool kids are talking about it for 2021, according to Politico, without any apparent worry about what might happen in 2019 and 2020.
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So why wait on this terrible idea? Let’s do it now. Donald Trump should announce that he has nominated six justices to the Supreme Court to expand it to 15 seats. With a 53-seat majority in the Senate, Mitch McConnell could get them all confirmed by the end of the summer at the latest.
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This is not a Swiftian Modest Proposal-esque satirical suggestion. I’d like to see Trump do it — but not to get those seats added to the Supreme Court. If Trump tries it, Congress would move heaven and earth to block him from succeeding at his court-packing plan, and that would be a bipartisan effort. We’ll have more later on the bipartisan project to curtail the National Emergencies Act after Trump’s border-wall declaration, but this would generation an outrage of an order of multitude higher. Legislation to limit the Supreme Court to nine seats might even pass on unanimous votes, or at least far more than would be needed for a veto override.
7 comments:
Of course, FDR succeeded in thoroughly packing the Supreme Court in the last century. We've being seeing how that worked out for the ensuing 75 years.
Fox News had a segment this noon about packing the Court by adding seats. The guest essentially walked us through a Democratic (his term) President adding a couple seats, then an ensuing Republican President adding a couple of his own, with repetition, and pretty soon we have a Court with 135 folks on it.
Eric Hines
And when we get a future Dem president, we will receive reams of "that was then, this is now" hypocrisy; and they'll still pack the court.
I don't think it should be done, but I do think it's a very good rhetorical device to put up against the arguments in favor of packing the court (if you can call them 'arguments').
I have noticed the following proposals:
1) Pack the SCOTUS, and limit the terms of members.
2) Eliminate or bypass the Electoral College (via the National Popular Vote compact).
3) Pack the Senate by adding new, reliably Democratic states (Puerto Rico and DC).
4) Eliminate the Senate.
5) Eliminate 1st Amendment protections for disfavored political groups like conservatives -- freedom of speech, freedom of association, freedom of religion. (Not for favored groups, however, for whom these should all receive new emphasis: non-white dormitories at colleges, enhanced religious protections for Muslims or Native American faith traditions at variance with Western norms, freedom of speech even to get up in people's faces and even assault them if the getter-upper is on the right side of things.)
6) Eliminate the 2nd Amendment.
7) Eliminate the 4th Amendment for Trump's team, all the way to raiding his private attorney's office.
8) Finalize the elimination of the 10th Amendment, bringing all under the control of the centralized Federal government -- once all these new powers are in place.
That's apart from the crazy Green New Deal proposals we've discussed separately, or the reparations proposal, or the soft socialism of Medicare for All, or the hard socialism of Bernie Sanders. These are the centrist proposals.
According to Instapundit, Marco Rubio is introducing legislation to fix the SC at nine. I'm betting we'll hear indignant howls like we did when Mitch brought the GND to the floor if his proposal makes it to a vote.
Marco Rubio is introducing legislation to fix the SC at nine. I'm betting we'll hear indignant howls like we did when Mitch brought the GND to the floor if his proposal makes it to a vote.
Maybe. But there's a difference between Rubio's proposal and McConnell's. McConnell's move will put the Progressive-Democrat Senators permanently on the record as favoring or disfavoring the GND, to their detriment with the relevant Leftist group.
Rubio's move, on the other hand, will an irrelevancy, a non-entity purely for show. No Congress can bind any subsequent Congress; a bill setting the Supreme Court at nine Justices can be undone in any later Congress. The only way to "fix" the size of the Supreme Court is through Article V--and that's not permanent, just more difficult to undo.
If the Progressive-Democrats howl over Rubio's move, they'll just be exposing their ignorance. Which might be Rubio's purpose.
Eric Hines
If I understand correctly, Rubio's proposal is to initiate an amending of the constitution, so it would be binding, or as binding as an amendment can be, but it won't be easy to get through.
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