An Argument For Supreme Court Reform

     "Court packing" is one of those conservative scare words that only seems to work on people who think they are conservatives. In truth, what Mitch McConnell pulled during his time as Senate Majority Leader between 2015 and 2021 was "court packing." For the first and only time in American history, he refused to allow Barack Obama to appoint Merrick Garland to the Supreme Court after the death of Antonin Scalia, leaving the seat unfilled during the final nine months of Obama's presidency until Donald Trump took office in 2017 and appointed Neil Gorsuch.

     In 2020, on the other hand, Republicans ditched their arguments about waiting until after the election and appointed Amy Coney-Barrett to the Supreme Court, confirming her in a record one month, merely a week before the 2020 election. 

     It's not like the people Republicans appoint legitimately are exactly winners. The appointment of male chauvinist and confirmed rapist Clarence Thomas to the Supreme Court in 1991 was so atrocious that it spawned the third wave of the feminist movement after Anita Hill's Capitol Hill heroism. Rapist Brett Kavanaugh, AKA Mr. "I Like Beer," was confirmed in 2018 and saw the #MeToo movement emerge as a result of Christine Blasey Ford's courage.

     "It's unconstitutional," they'll tell you. Actually, because most of the Constitution aimed to avoid a King George III, the document's statements on the judiciary were relatively vague. The Appellate Court System was not created until 1891. The original size of the Supreme Court was six judges when the Judiciary Act was signed in 1789, and the size of the court was adjusted in 1801, 1802, 1866, and 1869. In fact, the power to adjust the size of the Supreme Court was explicitly assigned to Congress in the Constitution. The only reason people think the size of nine justices was in the document is because the size of the Supreme Court has not changed in 150 years, although Franklin D. Roosevelt tried in 1937.

     Politics and law aside, it would simply be good for the country. The size of the court is not the only reform President Biden is considering with his bipartisan commission (fulfilling a major campaign promise of his). Term limits would prevent every appointment from turning into a showdown over the direction of the country over the following several decades. Members of either political ideology lose touch with the people they serve when they spend decades on the bench, and term limits would allow for new ideas and new backgrounds to shape the living framework of America for the future. Keeping with this, more diverse judges could be appointed, and having 13 justices to write opinions would simply allow them to hear more cases.

     The opposition to reform is almost never motivated by facts or good intentions.