Stealing a Supreme Court Seat is Asking for Court Packing

The packing of the United States Supreme Court is a dangerous idea. To do so, deeply weakens the foundations of the American system of checks and balances. If the union of the executive and legislative branches can simply overrule the judicial branch by expanding the size of the court with new judges until the legislative majority has a majority in the Supreme Court, then the Supreme Court is useless as a check in such situations. This would be a major change in how U.S. democracy works.

However, the Supreme Court has already lost much legitimacy, and the original design of how judges should be chosen has already been damaged.

Two pieces of background information are now needed: the partisan nature of U.S. democracy and an understanding of the founding intent of Advice and Consent.

The founders famously didn’t generally expect political parties when designing the Constitution. So, a major dynamic of the political process simply wasn’t taken into account. With the particularly polarized times we live in now, almost nothing political can be disconnected from the fight between Democrats and Republicans.

The Supreme Court was supposed to be separated from the political game. Judges get lifetime appointments so they don’t have to worry about reelection, and will go on to judge policies from administrations and legislatures different than the ones that appointed and confirmed them.