Court-packing, Democrats’ nuclear option for the Supreme Court, explained | Hacker News Reader

Court-packing, Democrats’ nuclear option for the Supreme Court, explained

vox.com

2 pointsandyidsinga4 comments

I found this paragraph and the following descriptions rather interesting:

> The existence of historical precedents for court-packing beyond FDR further bolsters the argument for it. In a 1968 article for the Baylor Law Review, political scientist JR Saylor detailed “seven occasions Congress has enlarged or diminished the size of the Supreme Court by one or two judges.” Each of these seven times, the changes were made either to “purge the Court of … justices making decisions objectionable to an incumbent of the White House or to a dominant party majority in Congress” or to “‘pack’ the Court in order that the policies of the government in power would be upheld as constitutional.”

fwiw - I'm not sure I agree with the concept of court packing, but reading about it, the reasons and mechanics are interesting especially in light of the Merrick Garland, Neil Gorsuch and Brett Kavanaugh nominations.

also very interesting:

> Plenty of legal scholars on both sides of the aisle have, for years, argued that the US goes too far in embracing judicial review; few other countries give their Supreme Courts the power we give ours to strike down democratically enacted laws.

and:

> Even in Canada, the parliament and the provinces retain the power to reverse Supreme Court decisions with supermajority votes.[1]

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Section_33_of_the_Canadian_Cha...

Meanwhile other countries have constitutional courts that must check if a new bill is constitutional before it becomes a law. I tend to prefer this solution most, considering that Congress have passed unconstitutional or borderline unconstitutional laws that haven't yet been verified by the supreme court much more often than the court system has passed undemocratic and anti-people rulings.

This is an interesting option to be sure, but what I find laughable about this article is an expressed fear that the new court will force decisions not supported by the “majority.” The expansion of liberalism was largely driven by courts forcing decisions that at the time went against popular opinion. Now that the shoe is on the other foot and a conservative court might peel back some of those decisions there is abject panic on the left.

I get the anger and fear of the potential consequences of future decisions made by a judge that was appointed by a President who did not win the popular vote, but to complain that it is suddenly unfair for courts to force a minority opinion on people is just nonsense.

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