Republicans propose amendment to limit the Supreme Court to 9 seats
28 replies, posted
https://www.cbsnews.com/news/republicans-propose-amendment-to-limit-supreme-court-justices-to-9/
Republican Rep. Mark Green of Tennessee said Tuesday he is introducing a constitutional amendment to limit the number of justices on the Supreme Court to nine, after several
Democratic presidential candidates have expressed support for expanding the number of justices to 15.
"This Thursday, I will be introducing a constitutional amendment that would limit the number of Supreme Court justices to 9 — the number of seats since 1869," Greene said on Twitter.
"The Supreme Court must remain a fair and impartial branch of government not beholden to party ... Schemes to pack the court are dangerous to the Founders' vision of an
independent judiciary that serves as a check on both the Executive and Legislative branches of government."
Sen. Marco Rubio, R-Fla., also tweeted he would introduce an amendment to keep the number of justices at nine.
Democratic presidential candidates like Pete Buttigieg and Beto O'Rourke have argued the Supreme Court is already too partisan. They have hinted at supporting a reform that would
give Republicans and Democrats five justices each, with an additional five justices chosen by the first 10. Sens. Kamala Harris, Elizabeth Warren and Kirsten Gillibrand also told
Politico they would consider supporting an expansion of the Supreme Court if elected president.
he had to tread lightly there he almost denounced his partisan court.
fair and impartial branch
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eVFd46qABi0
Fill the court to a conservative majority, then make it impossible to undo. 🤔
Very democratic, and very cool.
If Hillary had won and nominated even one judge that wasn't approved by the MAGAiest Republican senator, you know Republicans would be slamming the tables demanding the SCOTUS count go up to like 31 to pack the court.
McCain was going to try to limit the court to 8 seats if she won.
To be honest at this rate, the Supreme court looks like it's just going to end up evolving into a kind of superlegislative body once the pandoras box of stuffing it with new appointees becomes a thing. The idea that the Supreme court is an impartial body seems to be a polite fiction at best now.
Jennifer Rubin, a WaPo columnist who I'd consider center-right before the Overton window packed up and left the center-right long behind, has some insightful things to say about court-packing.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2019/03/19/why-court-packing-is-really-bad-idea/
TL;DR
packing the SCOTUS is a bad idea because it just encourages oneupmanship and rapidly intensifies and encourages partisanship in what is supposed to be an apartisan body
rather than undergo the painful and difficult process of Constitutional amendments to pack the court, SCOTUS rule changes and even something as simple as Chief Justice Roberts personally refusing to sign off on any decision to strike down legally-passed statute without a 6-3 majority consensus can protect the integrity of the law from Trumpian judge meddling
make sitting on the SCOTUS a one-term-max 18-year position before going back to a federal circuit gavel, as the Constitution does not provide for a lifetime appointment to the SCOTUS, only lifetime tenure as an Article III Federal Judge; an act of Congress is all it would take to change this
instead of packing the SCOTUS, it's a way better idea to massively increase (not pack) the number of judge seats on federal circuit courts and appeals courts to tackle the backlog of cases and the steady caseload for the predictable future
circuit and appeal judges pass cases up to the SCOTUS and handle many important decisions as part of working everything that never even makes it to the top, and a huge national judge pool is far harder for any single president to poison compared to nine seats on one court that hears single-digit percentages of federal cases at best
There's always more than one way to solve a political problem, but inevitably people latch onto the solution that's the simplest to explain and understand, even if it's far from the most desirable and successful option.
The entire Republican philosophy seems to be to climb a cliff and so you can throw rocks down at anyone else coming up. Get the money then fuck the poor, take the Supreme Court then ensure your dominance lasts a generation.
Counterpoint, we've been having this argument for over 100 years and the process has now reached the point where a president has to have a senate majority to get any judges confirmed. the train hasn't just broken down, its fallen off the tracks and rolled down the hill.
I've given up saying things like this because Republicans can literally do anything; they're above the law. Anything a Democrat does it automatically bad because they are the enemy. If a Republican shoots someone, he was excercising his 2nd amendment right and the guy deserved to be shot. If a Democrat shoots someone, they'll lynch them and demand death penalty for hurting an innocent.
The amount of hypocrisy has broken my meter. It legitimately frustrates me.
Honestly I think an even number of judges, selected from parties in conjunction with that party's % membership in respect to total population would make sense. That said, limiting it to 8 is kind of stupid.
Sounds like a good way to drive Dem turnout for midterms.
Here's the thing, why should centrists and leftists give a flying fuck about what hypocrites and liars think at all? People who act above the law do so only because nobody else chooses to stop them by any means necessary, and because the existing mechanisms have failed. Get it done first and worry about the fallout later, and maybe something can be done about the deadlock since reagan's election as president.
doesn't matter the senate is very hard for democrats to retake a majority let alone a supermajority, there's just more rural states than urban ones
Get 50 + VP, add Puerto Rico and DC by ending the filibuster for statehood admission only.
PR should be a state , DC and the associated territories should get a number of senators like 4 or 5 and their representatives in the house should have voting rights. DC as a state just doesn't make sense nor does the other miscelanious territories we have but I don't think it should stop us from giving them voting power, we already gave them non voting representatives.
Also of note is that a Democrat wants to add more seats. Both sides are being stupid and trying to change things to make it easier to get their way.
They do this and there cannot be a peaceful resolution to this entire shitshow; it will essentially create a limited dictatorship within America that cannot be undone by the will of the people.
An entire branch of the US government will be locked into partisanship for potentially decades.
Hey you don't get to be the party of precedent if you refused to seat Merrick Garland
If anyone thinks that increasing the size of the Supreme Court to stack it with the opposing ideology will lead to a 'peaceful resolution', they are completely delusional. The Supreme Court has severe problems right now that won't be addressed by just trying to manipulate it in one party's favor or the other; it needs either term limits or some kind of enforcement of non-partisanship.
The idea is the packed SCOTUS will allow democracy reform bills, stop gerrymandering, voter suppression and all that, to ensure Republicans don't get elected without becoming less crazy.
To make sure, was one of their sources some punk that got pardoned and gloated about it, and said that the Nazis were secretly pro-gay because of a few homosexuals in the top leadership? Something that has Souza?
I think they wouldn't even approve the current choices had she won. Remember, one of the GOP senators filibustered his own bill. I highly doubt they would approve them because Hillary chose them.
attempting to pack the supreme court was a low point for FDR regardless of what he wanted to push through, and the same applies today.
Honestly, I'm surprised they're not pushing legislation to lock it at 11 right this very instant so that Trump can pack it with two more conservative picks.
It already has no pretense of independence at the moment, so I fail to see why a few more seats would make a difference.
it makes all the difference once the republicans got back into power and use the exact same argument to justify adding more
Dog I'm not even sure anymore. I don't ask for sources from GOP supporters when they talk to me. last time I did that I got a fucking 30 page print out of some forum thread where some user was just spouting bullshit about the US constitution and somehow that was proof that the constitution doesn't grant rights to black people.
I'm not even joking. These people think that people on some random internet forum with a name like Trucknutz69 is as valid of an academic source as any other.
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