Pack The Court?

It is disturbing to see a plan afoot to alter the Supreme Court as we know it. Because of a potential tilt towards conservatism, there is a movement to “Pack The Court,” meaning the expansion of nine justices to something larger.

This has been tried before.

FDR tried it during the Great Depression as a way of diluting the court’s aversion to many of his New Deal ideas. Roosevelt tried to target older justices. It was largely seen as a political ploy to allow him to appoint up to six new jurors for every justice older than 70 years old who had served for more than ten years.

Members of the Supreme Court often serve well past the average age of retirement for the rest of America. The recently deceased Ruth Bader Ginsberg  was 87 and still serving.

Roosevelt lost in his attempt to pack the court, which was a good thing, in my view. This kind of ideological power grab is again being considered. Because of the imminent appointment of a new justice, who leans right, we are seeing proposals being floated to add justices to water down the highest court.

Conservatives did not consider “packing” the Supremes during decades of liberal rule. They waited their turn.

This reminds me of an old saying from my childhood.

“If you can’t win the game….just change the rules.”