"... with its own distinctive political incentives, internal divisions and weaknesses.... To confront a hostile Supreme Court, the people and their elected leaders need to be confident that they, too, have the power and the obligation to interpret the Constitution.... To persuade Americans that stern court-curbing measures are necessary, progressives must first convince enough Americans that the court is dead wrong about the Constitution.... This term, this court will decide how far to go in shutting down both affirmative action and race-conscious protections for equal opportunity in the voting arena.... [T]he right-wing court has decided that these amendments prohibit race-conscious efforts to redistribute some political and economic power and opportunity to Black Americans. Progressives today should do more than argue that such efforts are something the Constitution permits. They should explain instead — as Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson did on her first day on the bench — that the Constitution here means just the opposite of what the Supreme Court majority says. Measures like the Voting Rights Act, which the court has been gutting, are what the Constitution demands.... The rights this court denies and the laws it strikes down are often ones the Constitution demands...."
From "How Liberals Should Confront a Right-Wing Supreme Court" by lawprofs Joseph Fishkin and William E. Forbath in the NYT.
Presented for discussion, not in agreement, though I don't disagree with every word of it.
The reference to Justice Jackson is to the oral argument in Merrill v. Milligan (beginning at page 57 in the transcript):
That's my question, jumping way ahead after reading the New York Magazine headline, "Could Dobbs Be Reversed Like Roe Was?"
That's by Ed Kilgore. I'll have to publish this post and click on my "Ed Kilgore" tag to see what I've thought of his published musings over the years, but come on. Obviously, Dobbs can be overruled. We won't be able to stop talking about overruling Dobbs. Remember, we talked about overruling Roe for 50 years before it happened? Do the Dobbs haters have that kind of passion and stamina?
At some point in the next 50 or 100 years, there will be a majority of Supreme Court Justices who want to overrule Dobbs and get back to Roe (or forward to a new, better Roe (Casey was already a new, better Roe, and Roe can be re-improved)).
Now, let's see what Kilgore says:
From "A Supreme Court in Disarray After an Extraordinary Breach/The leak of a draft majority opinion overruling Roe v. Wade raises questions about motives, methods and whether defections are still possible" by Adam Liptak (NYT).
MEANWHILE: Alan Dershowitz tells Fox News: "I think this was leaked by a liberal law clerk who is trying to change the outcome of the case – either by putting pressure on some justices to change their mind or by getting Congress to pack the court even before June, which is very unlikely."
The Democratic bill is led by Sen. Ed Markey of Massachusetts and Rep. Jerry Nadler of New York, the chair of the House Judiciary Committee. It is co-sponsored by Reps. Hank Johnson of Georgia and Mondaire Jones of New York. The Supreme Court can be expanded by an act of Congress, but the legislation is highly unlikely to become law in the near future given Democrats' slim majorities, which include scores of lawmakers who are not on board with the idea. President Joe Biden has said he is 'not a fan' of packing the court....
Last week, Biden announced the formation of a commission of liberals and conservatives to study the structure of the Supreme Court, including the number of justices and the length of their service.
"To study the structure" ≈ to quietly kill the idea. So Markey and Nadler are stepping on their President's subtle manipulation. Another way of putting that is they could see what Biden was doing, so now is precisely the time to get out in front of him.
ADDED: I'm strongly opposed to enlarging the Court. I'm just saying I can see Markey and Nadler's motivation.
FROM THE EMAIL: Rob writes:
Based on the flood of Republican emails in my inbox today, I wouldn’t discount fundraising as a significant motivation for the Markey/Nadler Court-packing bill. (I assume a mirror image of that deluge has hit every D or progressive inbox today.) As with abortion, both sides can raise prodigious amounts of money off the threat of Court-packing. The fact that decisive action is always “just another election cycle away” is a feature, not a bug.
But he's authoritative, and he's pushing back liberal politicos, and he said it in a speech at Harvard Law School, so it's news, reported here, at "Justice Breyer says expanding the Supreme Court could erode trust" (WaPo).
In remarks prepared for a speech at Harvard Law School, Breyer wrote that the court’s authority depends on “a trust that the court is guided by legal principle, not politics.”
He added: “Structural alteration motivated by the perception of political influence can only feed that perception, further eroding that trust.”
Some Democrats and liberal activists say that adding seats to the court is the only way to blunt the court’s conservative majority. They contend it is a proper and logical response to what they say was a form of court-packing by Senate Republicans....
In other words, "some Democrats" have made it clear that they want to use the Court as a political tool, and that's exactly why it would undermine the Court's authority. These Democrats are not the counterweight to Breyer's point. They are the foundation!
But it would be wrong to think that the court-packing issue will simply go away. Over the last few years, the once-unthinkable proposal has clearly become part of mainstream political discourse on the political left. Thanks in part to the bad-faith behavior of Republicans (where the party first claimed it was wrong to vote on a Supreme Court nominee in an election year in 2016, and then took the completely opposite stance when it became convenient in 2020) the "Overton Window" on this issue has moved.
Whatever position I take on that, that’ll become the issue. The issue is the American people should speak. You should go out and vote. You’re voting now. Vote and let your Senators know strongly how you feel.Why shouldn't Court packing be an issue that the American people would take into account as they vote?! He should make clear what Democratic control of the White House and both houses of Congress would mean so that if people do vote for the Democrats, they are saying they want Court packing. And it's not just about the Senators. It takes a statute to increase the number of seats on the Court. This answer is blatantly deceptive. Or is it clear that Biden does support Court packing and just doesn't want to take responsibility for it? Biden could be against it but know that some Democrats would hold that against him.
●A Gallup poll that shows rising public approval for the court, with far more Americans thinking it is “about right” ideologically than either too conservative or too liberal.Apparently, people aren't feeling too activated about the Supreme Court, even after that uproar over Justice Kavanaugh last year. Nevertheless, there are ideas about changing it. There's ending life tenure, which requires a constitutional amendment and therefore won't happen, but Marquette asked about it and 72% favored fixed terms for Justices over life terms.
●An Annenberg Public Policy Center survey showing two-thirds of people trust the court to operate in the best interests of the public, and 70 percent think the court has the right amount of power.
●A massive survey from Marquette Law School finding that a majority of Americans have more confidence in the Supreme Court than other parts of the federal government and that few believe the justices take extremely liberal or extremely conservative positions....
The respondents in the Marquette poll opposed “court-packing” by a 57 percent to 42 percent margin. But Democrats were evenly split on the idea, and even that 40 percent support was startling to [one law professor].Yeah, but the pollsters did not use the term, and I think it would have skewed the results, because would be heard as pejorative.
“I can’t emphasize enough what a sea change that is,” [she] said. The term court-packing “used to be an epithet.”
BURNETT: The Supreme Court is currently made up of five Republican-appointed justices and four appointed by Democrats. The court just announced it will hear arguments in a case challenging some abortion rights. Vice President Biden, the Constitution does not specify the number of justices that serve on the Supreme Court. If Roe v. Wade is overturned on your watch and you can't pass legislation in Congress, would you seek to add justices to the Supreme Court to protect women's reproductive rights?Three? Seems to me — if "we" means Obama and Biden — that they had 2 — Sotomayor and Kagan and "they" — if "they" means Trump — had 2 — Gorsuch and Kavanaugh.
BIDEN: I would not get into court packing. We had three justices. Next time around, we lose control, they add three justices.
We begin to lose any credibility the Court has at all. I want to point out that the justices I've supported, when I defeated Robert Bork -- and I say when I defeated Robert Bork, I made sure we guaranteed a woman's right to choose for the better part of a generation. I would make sure that we move and insist that we pass, we codify Roe v. Wade.This is a good point. If the Supreme Court overrules Roe v. Wade, you don't have to pack the Court and keep going back to the Court for a different answer. You just need to pass a federal law guaranteeing the right. If you have the power in Congress to legislate to changed the configuration of the Court, you'd also have the power to legislate a federal right to have an abortion (though there's a slight danger that the Court could say the commerce power doesn't cover the regulation of abortions).
The public is already there. Things have changed. And I would go out and I would campaign against those people in the state of Ohio, Alabama, et cetera, who in fact are throwing up this barrier. Reproductive rights are a constitutional right. And, in fact, every woman should have that right. And so I would not pack the court. What I would do is make sure that the people that I recommended for the court, from Ruth Bader Ginsburg to Elena Kagan, who used to work for me, to others, that they, in fact, support the right of privacy, on which the entire notion of a woman's right to choose is based. And that's what I would do. No one would get on the Court. And by the way, if, in fact, at the end of this -- beginning next year, if, in fact, one of the justices steps down, God forbid, in fact, I would make sure that we would do exactly what McConnell did last time out. We would not allow any hearing to be held for a new justice.
As many on this blog know, I rarely respond to criticism of columns that I run in USA Today or other newspapers. As a columnist, I feel that I am given a rare opportunity to express my views and criticism comes with the territory. However, I was taken aback by many of the comments in response to my Sunday column in The Washington Post discussing my proposal for the expansion of the United States Supreme Court.Why don't you normally respond to criticism? You take your high platform in mainstream media. You profess from that position, and the little people who carp about it may not seem worth your time. But now you will bother. Why? It seems that blogging has raised a few people to a significant enough level that it matches the perch you got from the Washington Post.
Though the proposal was given serious and supportive reviews by some sites like Forbes, some conservatives immediately assumed that I was a liberal simply upset with the anticipated ruling striking down the individual mandate provision of the health care law. When another law professor and blogger (Ann Althouse) joined this ill-informed and uncivil chorus, I thought I would respond.I didn't assume he was "a liberal simply upset with the anticipated ruling." What if he hadn't read my words carefully and he was attributing to me the things he believed he was hearing from a "chorus"? That would make him ill-informed. That would be ironic. And, as we shall see, that is what he is doing.
This blog has always strived to maintain a strict civility rule — distinguishing it from many other blogs by discouraging and sometimes eliminating ad hominem and personal attacks.But you just hurled a series of insults at me. I only attacked your ideas. But I myself don't preen about civility. I do what I do. It is what it is. And I leave it to the reader to figure out what it is. I have my standards, but I don't brag about how lofty they are. Turley trumpets his "strict civility rule," and he's already violated it.
Yet, I am still surprised by the lack of civility and responsibility by many — particularly fellow lawyers and academics — in responding to such proposals.I'm not surprised that he's acting surprised, that he imagines he's a model of civility, or that he's making mistakes about me without noticing, or that he expects lawprofs to defer to other lawprofs. I find that all crushingly predictable. Can we get to the substance? I mean, my kindergarten teacher used to say "Ann, I'm surprised at you!" It hurt my feelings. But I'm old now, and I don't have much time.
[Update: Professor Ann Althouse has responded to my call for greater civility with a new blog entitled "Jonathan Turley's civility bullshit about my calling "bullshit" on his Court-packing plan." (Apparently both civility and factual accuracy fall into the same "BS" category for Professor Althouse). Notably, Professor Althouse does not address the fact that she was completely wrong in claiming that I was motivated by dislike for the anticipated ruling striking down the individual mandate in the health care case.]And Professor Turley does not hurry to add that my new post includes a statement that I'm going to write another post — you're reading it now — in which "I'll respond to more of Turley's long, professorly post which denies that his Court-packing plan arises out of a distaste for the Supreme Court's opinions." Notably, Professor Turley does not address any of what I did say in that post.
The column generated a torrent of comments (roughly 1100 on the Post site alone). Many of these comments came from conservatives who immediately assumed that I was a liberal law professor who was just proposing this reform because I expected to the Court to rule against the health care law. Others asked why I did not propose this in the past and just suddenly called for an expansion on the eve of the health care decision.That's not about me. I guess that's the "chorus."
Just to set the record straight.Turley only links to one column, and it doesn't say the individual mandate is unconstitutional. It merely states that there's a constitutional question that the courts will have to resolve. He's being very bland! (Actually, it's the same kind of restraint I've shown on the issue.)
First, before the health care law was passed, I spoke on Capitol Hill and expressed my personal opposition to the individual mandate law on federalism grounds though I felt that the Administration would have the advantage in the lower courts due to the current precedent from the Supreme Court. I then wrote and spoke against the individual mandate provision in columns, blog entries, and speeches....
Second, I did not just come up with this proposal on the eve of the decision. See, e.g., “Unpacking the Court: The Case for the Expansion of the United States Supreme Court in the Twenty-First Century.” 33 Perspectives on Political Science, no. 3, p. 155 (June 22, 2004). I proposed the expansion of the Supreme Court over ten years ago. I have discussed the reform with members of Congress and it has been debated in prior years.2004... 2002... this is post-Bush v. Gore and post- a lot of cases that have led the law professoriate to work on ways to limit the power of the Court. I don't know (or assert that I know) the details about which cases bother Turley, but to resort to Wikipedia, he is "frequently regarded as a champion of liberal and progressive causes," he's appeared frequently "on Countdown with Keith Olbermann and The Rachel Maddow Show," and he "has called for criminal prosecution of Bush administration officials for war crimes." I don't think my inference of his hostility to the Court's opinions is wrong, and I stand by my suspicion that his desire to dilute the power of Supreme Court Justices arises out of — remember my exact phrase — "a distaste for the Supreme Court's opinions."
Third, I have often agreed with the conservatives on the Court in its most controversial decisions. For example, like many in the free speech community, I agreed with the holding in Citizen’s United even though I disagreed with parts of the decision’s analysis and language. I have also said that I felt Arizona has a strong case on the immigration matter in claiming the right to enforce federal laws on illegal status.Fine. I can see he's not the most predictably left lawprof in the academy. I never said he was.
Finally, the criticism of these readers and Professor Althouse below appear based on an assumption that the expansion of the Supreme Court would predictably add liberals.Now, you're making inferences about me, so I guess inferences are okay. I made mine and you made yours. I'll set a good example by treating your assumption as a request to say whether that's what I really think. I don't!
There is no reason to make such an assumption since the expansion is spread over a decade.I know that's the proposal, and I quoted your language to that effect in my original post. Without that slow phase-in, the proposal would be truly ridiculous (an obvious, partisan power-grab).
Moreover, the Senate is expected to either continue to be split roughly evenly between the parties or actually go Republican in the next election. There is certainly no reason to assume that the additions to the Supreme Court would include candidates to my liking.Oops! He just admitted he wants liberals. Also, let me point out that it's Republican Presidents who've been disappointed by appointees who turn liberal. In recent years, we've seen Blackmun, Stevens, and Souter skew far from the politics of the Republican Presidents who appointed them. When's the last Democratic President whose appointee skewed conservative?
Indeed, I criticized Obama’s selections. I do believe that additional justices will add a diversity of experience and viewpoints regardless of philosophical leanings.I agree the Court lacks diversity. (For example: no Protestants.) But I think more Justices will mainly dilute the significance of the position. As Turley ended his op-ed: "the power of individual judges is diluted." You get more of a faceless panel of legal experts, much less of a sense of particular human beings making decisions.
After a couple of decades writing as a columnist and doing legal commentary, I have no illusions about people writing anonymously about articles or positions. The Internet often seems to unleash the most vicious side of people who seem to believe that they are relieved of basic decency or civility by anonymity. However, I was surprised by lawyers who made these baseless claims, including claims that are directly contradicted in the article (like the notion that one president would appoint all ten justices or that the number was simply selected arbitrarily). A simple search on the Internet would have shown that I am in fact a critic of the health care law.You have already made statements about me that are directly contradicted by the blog post you are talking about. So this hand-wringing about what other people do is annoying. But hang on, because next is the part about me:
That brings us to University of Wisconsin Professor Ann Althouse who ran a blog blasting my column. Althouse makes the point in her headline: “Don’t like the Supreme Court’s decision? Propose a Court-packing plan!” She then states the column pushes for the packing of the court “in anticipation of the Obamacare decision.” She responds to the proposal with “Oh, spare me the bullshit. It’s the same reason. You don’t like the opinions. It was a bad idea then, and it’s a bad idea now.” I must confess that, when one of our regulars sent me this link, I was taken aback.There's that word "aback" again. How many times does he need to tell us how emotional he got over the criticism? I mean, talk about bullshit. I don't really believe the Turley vapors come on that easily. Why is he begging readers to feel sorry for him? I suppose the answer is that he wants readers to get mad at me. Aren't I terrible? He had an op-ed in the WaPo and I... I... criticized it!
I do not expect such ill-informed and uncivil attacks from a fellow academic. While Althouse writes a conservative blog....Wait! Wait! Wait! Now, now, you wouldn't! You wouldn't commit the very offense you accuse me of? Ah ha ha. Too rich! Too funny!
... and has been something of a lightning rod in the past, I would have thought that she would do a little research before going after another professor.And I wouldn't have thought that you, a law professor, would talk about me not doing a little research before talking about me, a law professor, not doing a little research before talking about me (a law professor!). I write a conservative blog? You mean the one where I wrote about why I voted for Obama? The one with 300+ posts favoring same-sex marriage? The one that consistently supports abortion rights?
In reality, I am calling for the expansion of the Court despite the fact that I would agree with the anticipated decision from the Court striking down the individual mandate. It is precisely the opposite of what is being suggested. Even though I expect to be on the winning side, I still do not believe it should be left to a single swing justice.And, as explained above, I did not say one word about what I thought you thought about the health-care case. Think you might want to back off? You really deeply committed to this. It seems to me that you just don't want to hear any suspicion that your Court-packing proposal has a motivation based on the substance of the Supreme Court's opinions.
I understand that some bloggers are given to hyperbole like Althouse asking “If the greatest good is in the greatest number, why not 100? Why not 1000?” — even though the column (and longer original article) addresses this question with reference to how en banc appellate courts work and more importantly the high courts of other countries.It was mockery based on your statement "sometimes the greatest good can be found in the greater number." Since you admit a desire to dilute the power of judges, it was fair criticism to link this idea of yours — the superiority of the greater number — to the hypothetical problem of majoritarian decisionmaking about what the Constitution means (which would be antithetical to the idea that it is the role of the judges to say what the law is).
(I must confess that I find it odd to see the arbitrarily selected number of 9 defended by objecting that adopting the average size of other top courts is arbitrary).I didn't say it was arbitrary. I didn't delve into the comparison to circuit courts, but if you want to know, I think it's a bad comparison, because what the Supreme Court does in its ordinary cases isn't like an entire circuit of Courts of Appeals judges, who only occasionally come together for an en banc decision. Ordinarily, Courts of Appeals judges decide cases in 3-person sets. Those case-deciding units are one-third the size of the Supreme Court, so we learn, if anything, that a smaller decisionmaking group is better. In other words, the Supreme Court is already expanded.
It is the allegation that I am just making this proposal due to my opposition to the expected decision that is beyond the pale in my view.Your view is bad. You're hearing a "chorus" and seeing beyond "the pale." Wake up. Sharpen up.
I understand that we cannot always control comments on our blogs (and free speech allows for considerable room of expression), but such attacks do not present a particularly good model for our students.Yeah, so you need to stop. You, with the "strict civility" rule.
In her response to my call for greater civility and responsibility, Althouse responds by calling civility “bullshit” and says that she is “merely passionate and serious.”Professor Turley, you have put something in quotes that is not a quote. I said "I am passionate and serious about what I am doing...." I didn't say I was "merely passionate and serious." I am many other things too, including fun-loving. And law-professor-ass-kicking. You're being such a stickler that you are making yourself into such a big target that this isn't even fun. What I am passionate and serious about is, as I say right there, "speaking clearly" and showing my readers things they might find it hard to see, such as how law professors, facilitated by elite media, try to trick them with words. That's what bullshit is. I am passionate and serious about calling bullshit on law professors. And I'm doing it again.
Rather than simply admit that she was wrong...Because I wasn't!
... in suggesting that I was motivated by opposition to the expected ruling invalidating the individual mandate provision and a failure to simply confirm my position (which has been widely cited supporting the challengers), she again portrays the column as another example of how the Washington Post publishes columns “from law professors to launder its partisan politics into something with that looks scholarly and thoughtful.”Hey, how about proving your good faith by simply admitting you were wrong? And show me you understand that I'm saying the Washington Post was using you, with your theory, at a particular time for a particular reason. You're essentially discounting this point as if it's only a distraction that I'm putting up to keep from admitting I was wrong (which — have I ever told you? — I wasn't).
It appears that “passionate and serious” includes falsely stating another professor’s positions on cases as the basis for a personal attack.No, but I will passionately and seriously say right now that you are misstating what I have said.
Indeed, Professor Althouse has yet to inform her readers that she was wrong in suggesting that I disagreed with the conservatives in the health care litigation (and that my proposal was motivated by that opposition).You disagreed with the conservatives? Ahem.
She merely states that “In a later post, I’ll respond to more of Turley’s long, professorly post which denies that his Court-packing plan arises out of a distaste for the Supreme Court’s opinions.”What is the function of the word "merely" for Turley? Could it be... bullshit?
Of course, the obvious suggestion was that the column was timed to anticipate the health care decision — a common theme in comments on her blog. I am not sure what “distaste for the Supreme Court’s opinions” means (though Professor Althouse’s reference to my dislike for a “decision” is now distaste for “opinions.”).Oh! See, after all that bullshit, he's finally noticing my actual words. With his strict civility rule and staunch demands for accuracy, you might think that after he wrote that he'd realize that he needs to rewrite everything he's just said about me. Why didn't he?! Where is the civility? He's "not sure" but he can't make the mental effort to read the actual words of my original paragraph (even as amplified in this morning's post). Hello? Fellow law professor?! I said that the Washington Post decided to run this op-ed in anticipation of the Obamacare decision and that I presume that you have a distaste for (unspecified) opinions.
We all disagree with some of the Court’s decisions — even though I have agreed with the majority of the decisions from this Court. I often side with conservatives on federalism and other areas while disagreeing on other areas like free speech and criminal cases. I disagree with the liberal justices on other cases, but I am not motivated by a desire to pack the Court with libertarians (which is widely cited as closer to my own views on many issues) rather than liberals.Fine. I still suspect that your desire to dilute the influence of individual Justices arises from a distaste for the substance of their work and not merely — merely! — from some wholly neutral, disembodied structural conception of decisionmaking supposedly modeled on en banc Court of Appeals decisions.
It would make no difference to me if this was the Warren Court. It is in my view demonstrably too small. While it may seem highly improbable in today’s rabidly political environment, it is possible to make such a proposal out of principle.With or without rabies, the human mind does not operate in a substance-free vacuum.
Moreover, in a term with a series of 5-4 decisions on major cases and polls showing an increasingly unpopular Supreme Court, the proposal is obviously relevant to the current debate.
I have spent over ten years advocating for the expansion of the Court even though I often agree with the rulings of swing Associate Justice Anthony Kennedy. Putting aside the possibility that my proposal is based on principle rather than partisanship, I have never encountered a law professor advocating for incivility as a type of personal signature (a reaction shared by other leading legal bloggers like Scott Greenfield). I was hoping that raising the issue would result is a bit of self-reflection and possible dialogue on the loss of civility in our national discourse. While I did not expect an apology from Professor Althouse, I did not expect an academic to affirm the value of name calling and incivility — even when the blog is shown to be wrong on critical allegations.And I don't expect an apology from you either. I've read what you have to say and given my response. I'd like to see you truly engage with the substance of what I've written about you. And feel free to keep talking about the form of what I've written. You've got a thing about form instead of substance. I care about form too. I care about sharp and interesting writing, and I intend to keep it sharp. And when that sharpness hurts elite law professors, I'm fine with it.
My only point is that the overall commentary following the column shows once again how we have lost the tradition of civil discourse in this country. The tendency today is to personally attack people with whom you disagree...Remember your idea about "a bit of self-reflection"!
... and suggest hidden agendas or conspiracies.That sounds sinister, but what does it say about me? Of course, I don't take things at face value! Of course, I don't assume people only mean the things they are willing to put in writing! Law professors (and lawyers and judges and politicians) use words to manipulate people all the time. What I do on this blog is to try to pull apart those manipulations. With me, that's not just a "tendency." It's a mission.
I am always delighted to see spirited debate following a column, including those with whom I disagree. As in a classroom, I value the debate for its own sake — forcing people to consider alternative views and possibilities. The current tendency to shout down other voices with shrill or sophomoric attacks is degrading our politics and our society.Oh, bullshit!
Jonathan Turley seems hurt that Ann Althouse and other conservative academics acted in a way that shows “we have lost the tradition of civil discourse in this country.” Yeah, umm, Professor Turley, perhaps you didn’t read the footnotes, but here on the internet we don’t have a tradition of civil discourse. We do have a tradition of ad hominem attacks, hyperbole, and pictures of cats.My posts are "Don't like the Supreme Court's decision? Propose a Court-packing plan!" and "How did Jonathan Turley come up with 19 as the best number of Supreme Court Justices?"
The health-care decision comes 75 years after the famous “court packing” effort of President Franklin D. Roosevelt.... Roosevelt may have had the right idea for the wrong reason.Oh, spare me the bullshit. It's the same reason. You don't like the opinions. It was a bad idea then, and it's a bad idea now.
How would we get to a court of 19? Gradually. If Congress ordered such an expansion, no president would be allowed to appoint more than two additional justices in a term. Once fully staffed, the court would have a more regular natural turnover....If the greatest good is in the greatest number, why not 100? Why not 1000? Why not submit constitutional questions to the entire electorate to get the "greatest" answer?
Just as the philosopher and jurist Jeremy Bentham called for “the greatest good for the greatest number,” sometimes the greatest good can be found in the greater number. When it comes to the Supreme Court, that number may be 19.
పోస్ట్లు
