Can the SCOTUS be expanded?

Let's say we take back Congress with a vengence in 2006. Let's futher postulate that the mood of this country demands a more liberal, progressive interpretation of the Constitution.

Seeing that the Republicans have been "reinventing" government and doing their fair share of creating precedents, why couldn't a Democratic Congress majority expand SCOTUS to get more balance back?

Would this require a Constitutional Amendment?

FDR tried to expand SCOTUS to 15. He failed, as it was seen as an attempt to pack the court with partisans. An amendment would be needed, and the Democratic party would need a lot more strength in either Congress, or alternatively to control 3/4 of state legislatures to give that a chance. Don't think you'd want to propose that while a Republican is in office, since if this passed now Bush would make the nominations.

:party: WELCOME ABOARD!! :party:

The # of justices is set by law.

After the civil war the pukes in congress shrunk the court so Andrew Johnson would not get to appoint anyone. When he left office they raised it up again.

...does that mean that it can be changed with a joint resolution and not have to be signed into law?

It is set by the law authorizing the creation of courts by the power of the Constitution.

FDR threatened to do exactly that in the Great Depression. See: http://www.hpol.org/fdr/chat/

Here's a link about it. You can find more info, but there can be a lot of vitrol in some of them.

http://gummibear.netfirms.com/HTML/courtpacking.html

the court has a fixed membership. I believe the President and Senate could increase or decrease the numbers to suit.

Yes Roosevelt tried it and lost. But it can be done it appears. Odd that one of the judges a 'Roberts' always deciding against Roosevelt's 'New Deal' suddenly switched sides. A precursor of things to come? One never knows.

There is no constitutional requirement that Justices be lawyers either.

180

Instead of an unlimited (lifetime) appointment, cutting it down to a 9 year appointment, with the most senior judge being the first to go. The Justice would have the right to be re-appointed to a new 9 year term.

Why get stuck with a Thomas or a Scalia for a lifetime?

IMNSHO legislative term limits should be viewed as a cautionary model. We have legislative term limits out here in Cali and they've deprived us of a lot of good, progressive legislators like Tom Hayden, who were term limited out of office to be replaced by lesser lights. The new crew know that they have to find a new job in a set amount of time and are even more focused on elections on fund raising than the pre-term limit crowd was.

What are Supreme Court Justices going to move on to if we term limit them? Lobbyist? Elective office? How many of them are going to see the Supreme Court as a political stepping stone - - really start legislating from the bench, in order to boost their future image as a "Law and Order" candidate or a "Traditional Values" candidate?

Also, term limits for Supreme Court Justices is the same kind of "throw the baby out with the bathwater" solution that the nuclear option is - - we will not always be in the minority. Someday we will control the nominating process, and we shouldn't kneecap ourselves then to kneecap the GOP now.

Imagine that the Dems win back the Senate majority in 2006 (possible although not a lock) and either Smirk is forced to submit a Senate candidate they want. Or imagine that the confirmation hearings drag out until after the 2008 election is over, then a Democrat wins the White House (possible but far from certain). The Dem President then submits two nominees to swing the court to the left.

But back to the original topic: I also think that packing the Court would be difficult to justify, unless the Extreme Court issues a huge number of extremely unpopular opinions between now and whenever we control the nominating process again.

Many of the Republicans who came to office in 90s campaigned on promises to honor term limits....amazing how they've conveniently forgotten about that detail. In the process, we've put more power in the hands of bureaucrats that can control the process with little or no oversight. Institutional memory is an important by-product of longevity. There's a whole lot less of that continuity in our Legislators today.

I'm more interested in maintaining balance, particularly if we see amassive seachange in the political dynamic. If the American people want a progressive agenda, I don't want regressive/conservative doctrinaires thwarting the will of the people. Seems expanding the Court to dilute the power of a shrinking minority could only be addressed through increasing the size of the court.

And another thing....increasing the court size would diminish the impact of the individual jurists on our political landscape while assuring that a broader range of opinions are considered.

It could instead require that anyone standing for the Nth time have to get, say, a plurality +10% (or 15% or whatever), with subsequent re-elections requiring more and more til the individual must be unanimously re-elected.

Message removed by moderator. Click here to review the message board rules.

You would know with certainty when an opening is coming .... and that would influence elections. It politicizes the court too much.

Which - in reality - it was.

The 'power grab' was an attempt to get legislation past the reactionary SCOTUS of the time, which was blocking everything while the nation went down the drain--or toward socialism, which I'm sure seemed like much the same thing to Roosevelt et al. The SCOTUS was too hidebound and pro-wealthy to see the writing on the wall; eventually there would have been civil war, since if they weren't going to let even a hint of social-justice legislation get through, they clearly wouldn't have held still for a total peaceful repudiation of Capitalism. Eventually something (threats?) penetrated the heads of those numbskulls and some of them retired, breaking the logjam.

Overnight, they went from anti-New Deal to pro-New Deal.