An obvious advantage of the 18 year terms is that it doesn’t give the POTUS an incentive to pick someone especially young just to maximize their years on the court. You won’t want to go too old lest they don’t make it 18 years, but there’s a lot less incentive to find an inexperienced hard-core righty/lefty straight out of law school, or heck straight out of high school for that matter (as there is no requirement that justices have any legal experience).
Ex SCOTUS justices looking for work will easily be able to get a job teaching at the law school of their choice. Or go back to being a federal judge if that was their prior job (as is usually the case).
I think the optics of adding seats on the court will be very bad. I think it is a very risky move with a high probability of backfiring. Yes, there are arguments to be made, but I don’t think the public will buy the arguments. At best the arguments are of the “two wrongs making a right” variety, and even if moderates agree that ACB should not have been nominated / confirmed and/or that Garland should have been… it is still a stretch to use that as justification for permanently expanding the court.
That’s certainly true for me. I don’t like the GOP’s shenanigans, and I voted against every complicit person that I had the opportunity to vote against. But despite the fact that I agree that the GOP basically stole a seat… that still doesn’t make it right for the Dems to steal two in my book. Let the GOP pay at the ballot box and learn that it doesn’t pay to stoop to such shenanigans. Don’t stoop to their level.
so, just let the supreme court overturn roe v wade and obamacare and overturn anything that the dems try to do? it’s not just about “stooping to their level”. There are huge consequences to their actions that still will be felt with dems in power.
All it takes is one high profile ruling that horrifies a majority of the public and public opinion will swing quickly towards wanting reform. If they strike down the ACA with no replacement, I think the idea that additional seats are needed would be accepted.
Well, let’s see what they do first. I have my doubts that they’d overturn Roe and if they did I have my doubts as to how much would actually change. Overturning Roe doesn’t outlaw abortion. It means that it returns to being a state matter. I think most states where you can actually get an abortion currently would keep it legal. The places that would make it totally illegal are already placing such heavy restrictions on it that there are few to no providers in the state anyway.
Obamacare is already kind of toothless with the mandate removed and that didn’t require the SCOTUS to kill.
And in the long run, I think it will ultimately be more destructive to liberal causes to pack the court than to accept the current set of 9 justices and work on how to proceed. It’s not worth winning a battle at the cost of losing the war.
I read somewhere the idea of adding another 10 justices. I think the idea is that this would make it very hard for the court to issue sweeping opinions, and in general make it less powerful.
Ideally I think something like that must be done, which fundamentally reduces the power of the supreme court and cannot be undone by a tit for tat by the republicans.
this would make nobody happy. the conservatives want the court to protect them from federal overreach, and the liberals want the court to protect minorities from state laws that trample individual rights. both of these things would be harder.
however clearly the democrats cannot get what they want in the long run because the senate favors smaller more rural states. i suppose it remains to be seen if the republicans can get what they want, but i personally think not because they are in the minority.
I agree that Republicans took it to a whole new level that threatens democracy, but I think both sides have been abusing it to varying degrees over the past few decades.
Add 2. That’s 11. Those 2 are permanent, no 18 year term limit. If Breyer retires or Clarence Thomas dies, they aren’t replaced. (alternatively, Breyer retires and Biden names 3 permanent to match Trump’s 3).
Change all prospective justices to 18 year term limits to be added in odd years. Then name Justice #12 in 2021. Justice #13 (or 12 or 11) in 2023. 2nd term (or Republican president) gets 2. Etc. etc.
Attempt to pass Constitution Amendment solidifying this so a Republican sweep can’t just undo these prospective changes.
The one thing you can’t do Constitutionally is remove (or limit) existing Justices retroactively. Barrett and Kavanaugh are permanent unless impeached and removed.
There is a counter argument – The big SC cases involve telling legislatures that their laws are unconstitutional. That’s a big deal.
Maybe those decisions should require more than a 5-4 or 6-5 or 7-6 or whatever majority. An even number would require a 5-3 or 6-4 or 7-5 advantage.
When the SC ties, the appeals court ruling stands, but just for part of the country and just temporarily (because some turnover on the SC might invite another case).
It’s politically unpopular. It will guarantee the Ds lose their majorities.
It’s easily undone by the next R majority, which will simply add their own seats. If the Ds add two, the Rs will add four, etc.
I don’t think that “every piece of D legislation” is going to be repealed. If popular legislation does get repealed, there will be consistent pushback at the polls. I
It’s a fairly short hop from overturning Roe(which Barrett, Thomas, and Alito at a minimum would clearly do in a heartbeat) to interpreting fetal homicide laws as conferring personhood on a fetus and overturning abortion nationwide. They are much farther along than you think.
You realize that in advocating for packing the court you are advocating for exactly the type of action that leads to totalitarian regimes and cycles of revolution . It would help remake the US into nothing better than some of the banana republics or “at best” China. That’s if you consider China an at best.
The thing that has allowed the US to maintain its position as a strong stable democracy is the peaceful transition of power between political groups. If you start radically altering the makeup of government bodies outside of the established methods whenever a new group achieves power you end the peaceful transfer tradition.
Things have been getting worse between the parties since the 2000 election. Ried keeps the Senate in Pro-forma session over the break to prevent Bush from making appointments. McConnell uses the filibuster and cloture to stall Obama intiatives. Reid reduces cloture from 60 to simple majority for everything but SCOTUS. McConnell blows it up for SCOTUS when Dems use it for Trump nominees. It needs to stop before we destroy our country.
As far as the Garland nomination I said at the time that hearings should be held. The man deserved that much. The truth is that it is a historical fact that in the final year of a President’s term the Senate will only confirms a SCOTUS nominee if the Senate is held by the same party. It wasn’t “Garland’s seat” or “Obama’s seat”. Until the Senate confirms a nominee its nobody’s seat. That is true no matter which party controls the Senate or who is POTUS.
We have ALREADY BEEN THERE. If Trump wins/steals this election, that’s it, the U.S. as a democracy is over. A 6/3 permanent SC is absolutely untenable. A majority Supreme Court (along with all of the other federal courts) named by a minority president and minority Congress (after refusing to give Obama’s nominees hearings) is not democratic.
Preventing another Trump/McConnell is an absolute must.
The McConnell doctrine - do what you can because the Constitution lets you - should be the governing strategy for the next four years.
If Biden were to spend year 1 focused on expanding the courts, and that’s it, yeah, that’s going to lose the public.
Starting in January 2021 with quick passage of the HEROES Act (perhaps with additional retroactive bailout payments for earners under $100k) would buy a lot of goodwill from the general public.
I think the United States has been a massive failure and it’s way too divisive right now and should break up into smaller nations personally, but seems like that’s not getting much traction and something about the civil war and blah blah blah
Democrats need to win this narrative, and point out the obvious that the Republicans have abused the constitution to pack the Judiciary at all levels with completely unqualified candidates.
Any actions taken by the Biden administration to undo the damage done by McConnell would not be ‘packing’ the courts at all. Fixing a system broken by others, is not breaking the system.
