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In Her Own Words, Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg Opposed Partisan Court Packing (Increasing Number of Justices) Now Advocated By Mayor Garcia
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In Her Own Words, Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg Opposed Partisan Court Packing (Increasing Number of Justices) Now Advocated By Mayor Garcia
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The number of Supreme Court Justices is determined by federal law, not the constitution. To increase the number of justices/pack the Court would require the following in November 2020: Democrats would have to retain control of the House and gain majority control of the U.S. Senate and win the White House.. The current Senate -- with slim Republican majority -- remains in office until Jan. 3, 2021.
In her ,2019 interview with NPR, Justice Bader Ginsburg made clear she does not support court-packing (expanding the number of Justices.).
[NPR website text] ...As Ginsburg notes, there is no fixed number of justices specified by the Constitution, and the court over the course of history has had as few as five justices and as many as 10.
Roosevelt's proposal would have given him six additional Supreme Court appointments, expanding the court to 15 members. And Ginsburg sees any similar plan as very damaging to the court and the country.
"If anything would make the court look partisan," she said, "it would be that — one side saying, 'When we're in power, we're going to enlarge the number of judges, so we would have more people who would vote the way we want them to.' "
That impairs the idea of an independent judiciary, she said.
"We are blessed in the way no other judiciary in the world is," she noted. "We have life tenure. The only way to get rid of a federal judge is by impeachment. Congress can't retaliate by reducing our salary, so the safeguards for judicial independence in this country, I think, are as great or greater than anyplace else in the world."
But the whole notion of the country's independent judiciary hinges on public trust, Justice Bader Ginsburg noted....
[Scroll down for further.]
Thus far, two Republican Senators have signaled they oppose taking up a Supreme Court nominee prior to the Nov. 2020 election. Sen. Susan Collins of Maine and Sen. Lisa Murkowski of Alaska have indicated they oppose taking up a nominee before the November 2020 election.
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A proposal by President Franklin D. Roosevelt to "pack the court" (expand its number) after it struck down some of his New Deal legislation ultimately failed, when some of FDR's Democrat party allies voiced concern that it could damage the Court's check-and-balance function.
In the wake of Justice Bader Ginsburg's passing, some Dem partisans (including Mayor Garcia) and likeminded academics have justified expanding the Court in view of a Trump majority Court's ability to shape major issues for decades to come, coupled with the Republican Senate's 2016 refusal to take up a Supreme Court nominee offered by President Obama in the 2016 election year. .
In 2019, now-Presidential candidate Joe Biden explicitly opposed expanding the Court and in a statement yesterday (Sept. 20) said the Senate should vote on the nominee of whichever candidate wins the Nov. 2020 election.
In a statement dictated to her granddaughter just days before her death, Justice Bader Ginsberg said: "My most fervent wish is that I will not be replaced until a new president is installed" and didn't advocate increasing the number of Court Justices if that didn't happen.
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In addition to Mayor Garcia, former South Bend Indiana Mayor/former Dem Presidential candidate Pete Buttigieg supported increasing the number of Supreme Court justices as have other public figures who argue that the importance of the issues now at stakes coupled with Republicans' 2016 action in withholding a vote on President Obama's 2016 Supreme Court nominee justify court packing in response.
But opponents warn of the long-term consequences for protective check and balance. Writing in Reason magazine at this link, Professor of Law Ilya Somin of George Mason University states:
If the Democrats pack the court, the GOP will respond in kind, as soon as they get the chance. The predictable result will not only be a loss of "credibility" for the Supreme Court, but also the elimination of judicial review as an effective check on the other branches of government. If the president can pack the court any time his or her party controls both houses of Congress, they can prevent the court from making decisions that curb unconstitutional policies they may wish to enact.
In 1937, Democrat Senator Burton Wheeler spoke in opposition to FDR's plan
Create now a political court to echo the ideas of the Executive and you have created a weapon. A weapon which, in the hands of another President in times of war or other hysteria, could well be an instrument of destruction. A weapon that can cut down those guaranties of liberty written into your great document by the blood of your forefathers and that can extinguish your right of liberty, of speech, of thought, of action, and of religion. A weapon whose use is only dictated by the conscience of the wielder.
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