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https://newrepublic.com/article/159823/ ... reme-court



It is an almost entirely foregone conclusion that Amy Coney Barrett will be seated on the Supreme Court, cementing a 6–3 conservative majority that will serve as an obstacle to Joe Biden’s policy agenda should he and the Democratic Party win full control of government in November. As everyone by now knows, that’s a majority Biden and Democrats could conceivably do something about. Progressives have been pushing court-packing for years at this point—it’s one of the major items of a structural reform agenda that also includes eliminating the Senate filibuster and adding new states. In recent days, a number of more moderate voices have joined in, backing court-packing as a strategy for rebalancing the judiciary specifically justified by Barrett’s nomination.

The most prominent members of this camp include Quinta Jurecic and Susan Hennessey of Lawfare, who wrote a piece for The Atlantic arguing that court-packing—an idea they had initially dismissed as “institutionally corrosive and politically unserious”—could force Republicans into making stabilizing concessions, provided Democrats add just two justices capable of winning bipartisan support, preserving a 6–5 conservative majority. “This would change the political environment from a situation in which one party routinely plays hardball and the other party gets rolled, to a situation in which both parties have an incentive to cooperate in order to avoid the disaster of an ever-expanding Supreme Court flipping back and forth between parties as power changes hands,” they wrote. “It also corrects the imbalance of a Court stacked with Republican appointees, returning both parties to something closer to an even playing field.”

Joe Biden, no procedural radical himself, has notably refused to reject court-packing outright as an option if Barrett is confirmed, despite having opposed the idea during the Democratic primary. All of this has incensed conservatives, few more so than National Review’s Charles C.W. Cooke, who contends that court-packing would amount to an embrace of the authoritarianism Democrats have seen and decried in Donald Trump. “If the coverage of the Trump era has featured a prominent theme, it has been that destructive ideas must be countered before they take hold, regardless of whether they are again presented or likely to be brought to fruition when broached,” he wrote. “Irrespective of the era, there are few more destructive ideas than Court-packing, and none so keenly in need of ubiquitous condemnation.”

If so, indignant conservatives are late to the game. As Arizona political analyst Hank Stephenson recently noted for Politico Magazine, at least 10 states have seen efforts, led mostly by Republicans, to change the size of their courts over the last 10 years. Additionally, the Supreme Court’s size has been altered seven times in our history; partisan politics influenced most of those occasions, including the very last change—when pro-Reconstruction Republicans who tried to shrink the court under Andrew Johnson expanded it to the current nine seats under Republican President Ulysses S. Grant in 1869.

There is, though, something genuinely strange about the notion that Barrett’s nomination has established a novel and unexpected rationale for packing the court. Conservatives and legal scholars have criticized Biden and his surrogates, entirely fairly, for claiming that Barrett’s confirmation process is somehow “unconstitutional”—it plainly isn’t. Jurecic and Hennessey don’t argue so themselves, but they do make the case that Barrett represents a transgression offering more reason for dramatic reform than the structural defects and inequities progressives have long identified within the constitutional system, some of which they list explicitly. “The Court has come to more closely represent the interests of a powerful minority,” they wrote. “Justices are confirmed by a Senate in which rural, predominantly white states are overrepresented; the Electoral College amplifies the same effect in producing presidents who win elections despite losing the popular vote. And Republican-appointed justices have been able to perpetuate conservative control over the Court despite periods of Democratic control of the White House and Senate by timing voluntary retirements to effectively bequeath seats to their political party.”


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There is, though, something genuinely strange about the notion that Barrett’s nomination has established a novel and unexpected rationale for packing the court.

It's Barrett nomination cram-down coupled with the Merrick Garland slow-roll that leads to the Pandora's Box of court packing to be opened.

If there are no real rules, then it is all in play.

There should be some sort of term limits on the supremes.

nafod wrote: ↑Tue Oct 20, 2020 7:19 pm

There is, though, something genuinely strange about the notion that Barrett’s nomination has established a novel and unexpected rationale for packing the court.

It's Barrett nomination cram-down coupled with the Merrick Garland slow-roll that leads to the Pandora's Box of court packing to be opened.

If there are no real rules, then it is all in play.

There should be some sort of term limits on the supremes.

There are rules to the game. The GOP is using them right now. And now, your progressive overlords want to throw out the rule book altogether, in part because they realize they can't get what they want by playing according to it.

Fat Cat wrote: ↑Tue Oct 20, 2020 7:28 pm

nafod wrote: ↑Tue Oct 20, 2020 7:19 pm

There is, though, something genuinely strange about the notion that Barrett’s nomination has established a novel and unexpected rationale for packing the court.

It's Barrett nomination cram-down coupled with the Merrick Garland slow-roll that leads to the Pandora's Box of court packing to be opened.

If there are no real rules, then it is all in play.

There should be some sort of term limits on the supremes.

There are rules to the game. The GOP is using them right now.

What rules? The one that says you don't have to vote on a court nomination of you don't want to? Garland?

The article you cite points out that the number of justices on the supreme court is not fixed anywhere. So why not make it larger? Why just nine?

Not voting on Garland was bullshit, and now payback is going to be a bitch.

The Merrick Garland thing was ugly gamesmanship by the GOP, but well within their power as they were elected freely and fairly and they had the constitutional power to deny him a hearing. But, this is water under the bridge now. You're not thinking clearly, and you didn't read the article. Packing the Supreme Court is only one of the counter-tactics that they are suggesting, on their way to making the case that:

Unhinged Leftwing Maniac wrote: ↑Tue Oct 20, 2020 7:39 pm That said, the American left should work toward abolishing the Constitution someday—either for a new document or a new democratic order without a written constitution.

So, nafod...do you support abolishing the Constitution of the United States to pursue unfettered progressivism? Because the likely outcome of open warfare and factionalism in the political class isn't cozy social programming, it's Caesar.

Ok, I read the article. No one is abolishing the Constitution anytime soon.

I rank this up there with 2nd Amendment nuts who are constantly prepping to overthrow the government to “save the Constitution”. Talk about your Caesar.

The current trajectory of the minority of Americans dictating what’s what to the majority of Americans is going to result in more of this. When the government stops serving the people...

nafod wrote: ↑Tue Oct 20, 2020 9:59 pm Ok, I read the article. No one is abolishing the Constitution anytime soon.

That's great. It's more common to gather information about a topic of discussion before forming opinions, but you have really blazed your own trail.

nafod wrote: ↑Tue Oct 20, 2020 9:59 pm I rank this up there with 2nd Amendment nuts who are constantly prepping to overthrow the government to “save the Constitution”. Talk about your Caesar.

Uhhh, this is awkward. The reason for the 2nd Amendment is actually in the text of the 2nd Amendment. You should read it some time, it's short.

nafod wrote: ↑Tue Oct 20, 2020 9:59 pm The current trajectory of the minority of Americans dictating what’s what to the majority of Americans is going to result in more of this. When the government stops serving the people...

A minority of (((Americans))) dictating what’s what? Cool it with the antisemitism, bro. Not cool AT ALL.