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Comment by bdw5204 | Hacker News Reader

Venezuela's Supreme Court was packed by Hugo Chavez 20 years ago[0]. He expanded the Court from 20 to 32 judges. When he did this, he also filled 5 existing vacancies with new judges. In other words, their Supreme Court is controlled by the Maduro regime.

[0]: https://www.hrw.org/news/2004/12/13/venezuela-chavez-allies-...

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Interesting. In the past few years, I heard about how expanding the US Supreme Court was a reasonable approach to take. I wonder if proponents were aware of this case in Venezuela.

I am at least. It's "a reasonable approach to take" in that it may be an effective mechanism for accomplishing certain goals like diluting the power currently concentrated there or preventing some specific action the court may take with its current majority.

I don't think there's a framework that can universally tell you whether supreme court expansion is always good in all cases or always bad in all cases. Taking effective action is bad when you do it for bad reasons and good when you do it for good ones. Unsatisfying but there it is.

I personally would not call that a reasonable policy proposal but it is (unfortunately) constitutional due to an oversight by the US Framers in 1787. The appropriate way to stop it from passing would be to vote against politicians who advocate it as they are unfit for office.

FDR tried it during his time, wanted to expand it to 13 I think. It didn't work. But what we really need for SCOTUS is time limits and automatic replacements at intervals to take politics out of the process a little bit.

There's a perspective from which FDR's attempt to pack the court did work: He didn't expand the court, but the credible threat that he would do so got the justices to back off on blocking the New Deal policies he was implementing.

unfortunately with the way case law works, we are stuck with those bad decisions today.

> what we really need for SCOTUS is time limits and automatic replacements at intervals to take politics out of the process a little bit

Wouldn't the need for periodically choose replacements add politics instead?

We already periodically replace them, that period just happens to be their lifetime. If you shorten that period you lower the stakes if the "other side" gets to fill a slot, you'll get another chance to rebalance in X years, where X is a known value and doesn't require someone to die (or willingly relinquish power).

I'd rather replace one justice every 4 year term and occasionally one retires or dies than never know when they come.

as a reaction to the current court being stacked, not as an overall it should be done kind of thing.

The court is already stacked through blatant obstructionism during Obama’s term.

As with anything, it's all about implementation. The Supreme Court's size fluctuated over time, with different presidents increasing--or decreasing--it, often in response to the Court's actions or the major political disputes of the day. And often for even more partisan reasons than the current arguments for expansion.

John Adams and the Federalist Party reduced the Court from six to five; Jefferson restored the Court to six before expanding it to seven a few years later. Congress bumped it up from seven to nine in 1837, and Lincoln added a tenth during the Civil War. After the war, and at least partially motivated by vacancies that would have offered Andrew Johnson the opportunity to nominate justices who would screw with the Reconstruction plan, Congress reduced the Court from ten to seven. In 1869, Congress increased the Court's size to nine...and nominated two additional justices the very day the Court ruled paper currency--greenbacks--unconstitutional, who would then enable the Court to reverse that decision.

That said, there are non-partisan arguments for expanding the Court. We now have thirteen circuits; historically, each justice was responsible for a circuit but when appeals courts were added, the Supreme Court wasn't expanded. And then there's the expanded use of the shadow docket for more consequential questions. All of that's dramatically increased the Court's workload, and fixing it would probably be preferable...assuming that the act of fixing it didn't cause other issues.

Beyond that, not all of the expansion proposals amount to "add as many as we can." Many of them are tied to other reforms that are meant to lower the perceived stakes of each appointment, and grant a sort of regularity that ought to appeal to both parties without succumbing to what Venezuela current has to deal with.

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