Politics: The Pros and Cons of So Called Court Packing

There is a term that isn’t widely agreed upon as the proper and accepted way of saying it as it is normally just a derogatory way of the other side referring to a way of expanding the Supreme Court beyond its current nine members. It is called that based on an idea that FDR had.

We used to have only six justices on the court as the main number. It was increased all the way up to ten justices at one point, but was largely the same starting around shortly after the Civil War era. There is nothing in the constitution that mandates nine members. Mitch McConnell even got rid of that number under Obama only to not stick with his new norm when it no longer benefitted him a mere four years later.

What are the benefits to expanding the court? Well, we’d hopefully not have to worry that much about the long influence people would have forever if we could put more on them in the future. We also would be able to add more without having to wait until new vacancies. It would be nice to help the court by doing this.

Of course, there are downsides to this as well. If we get rid of norms permanently, then the other side will do whatever they can to abuse the same change. There is a lot of damage that can be done by this all in the name of supposedly fixing damage to the court. If we are able to do this, then what wouldn’t be off limits in the future? Would anything?

It is hard to tell what can or should be done with the Supreme Court in order to fix it. There might be hope in the future for the courts after all. I’d have to wait and see just how the case on the Affordable Care Act turns out to see if it could be good even under the current justices. A lot of this worry over the court might not be over much. 

Now I’ve been gone with these political updates for a while and they will be back for at least some of the moment as this one will become the last of the Supreme Court themes for a while. I am also going to post this blog on every other Tuesday for the near future until the first post of this blog is on the first Tuesday of the month. It will then occupy a month of that post before I go back to just at least one post of this blog a month. You’ll find out soon enough what new theme will be replacing the one that I have now. I will be back in the future with more posts.