Is a Doj Review of Supreme Court Nominees Normal?
When Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg passed abroad on September 18, 2020, many Americans didn't take the proper time to grieve — instead, they panicked about what her passing meant for the future of the country. Holding the residual of an entire republic is besides bang-up a burden for anyone'south shoulders, and Justice Ginsburg had been conveying that weight for a long, long time. Instead of holding infinite for her passing, Republican politicians wasted no time in queuing up a nominee for the empty Supreme Courtroom seat, eventually landing on Amy Coney Barrett — a longtime Notre Matriarch Constabulary School professor who served fewer than three years on the Seventh Circuit before her nomination to the highest courtroom in the American judicial arrangement.
In 2016, then-Senate Bulk Leader Mitch McConnell infamously vowed to cake President Obama's outgoing Supreme Court nomination of Merrick Garland on the grounds that the American people should have a "voice" and that to rush a nomination (and confirmation) would be to overly politicize the issue. In 2020, however, McConnell didn't concord to those principles he outlined four years earlier, leading to Barrett'due south confirmation hearings and equally rushed swearing in anniversary, which took place about a week before Election Day on October 26, 2020.
This motility led many to criticize McConnell, including New York Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (@AOC), who simply tweeted, "Expand the court." Additionally, Massachusetts Senator Ed Markey (@EdMarkey), who is Ocasio-Cortez'southward Light-green New Deal co-author, tweeted, "Mitch McConnell set the precedent. No Supreme Courtroom vacancies filled in an election year. If he violates information technology, when Democrats control the Senate in the side by side Congress, we must cancel the filibuster and expand the Supreme Court."
The Number of Supreme Court Seats Has Been Adapted Before — Here'due south How It'southward Done
This call for a SCOTUS expansion has led many to wonder: Is such a motility even possible? The short reply: yeah. Congress could easily change the number of seats on the Supreme Court bench. According to the Supreme Court'due south website, "The Constitution places the power to make up one's mind the number of Justices in the easily of Congress" — only another instance of those supposed checks and balances that guide a ramble regime. In fact, the number of Justices has shifted several times throughout the Court'southward history. In 1789, the starting time Judiciary Act set the number of Justices at vi; during the Civil War, the number of seats went upward to nine and so briefly 10; and, in one case President Andrew Johnson took office, Congress passed the Judicial Circuits Human activity in 1866, cutting the number of Justices to seven and then that Johnson couldn't stack the court in favor of Southern states.
Since 1869, however, the Supreme Court has been composed of nine Justices. In semi-recent history, there's been one notable endeavor to expand the Courtroom — ane that volition live in infamy, so to speak. Dorsum in 1937, President Franklin Delano Roosevelt aimed to aggrandize the Court, which kept shooting down some of his New Deal legislation. More specifically, FDR felt that many of the older Justices were out of touch with the times, so much and then that they were colloquially dubbed the "nine old men."
FDR'due south proposal? Add one Justice to the Supreme Court for every 70-year-old Justice residing on the bench. That would've resulted in 15 Supreme Courtroom Justices, simply fifty-fifty the Democrat-controlled Congress — and FDR'southward own Vice President — were against the idea. Since FDR'southward infamous defeat, no attempt to expand or reduce the Supreme Court has gathered much steam — until at present.
How Likely Is It That Democrats Volition Expand the Supreme Court in 2021?
Interestingly enough, Politico points out that President Biden has been outspoken near not expanding the court. In 2019, President Biden even went as far as saying "we'll live to rue that day [nosotros expand the Court]," arguing that an expansion would atomic number 82 to constant changes — more expansions, more reductions. In short, it would milkshake the American people's faith in the legitimacy of the Supreme Court (and potentially the Democratic party). Of grade, that'south but one scenario — and one that hasn't happened in the past. Simply, in the past, Vice President Kamala Harris has shown some back up for the idea, saying she'd be "open" to information technology. Even so, both Vice President Harris and President Biden have as well dodged questions surrounding court-packing and Supreme Courtroom expansion.
On the other hand, more outspoken proponents take tried to assemble momentum for the idea. Representative Ocasio-Cortez expanded upon her initial "Expand the Court" tweet, calling out Republicans' hypocrisy toward appointing new Justices during presidential election years. "Republicans practice this because they don't believe Dems have the stones to play hardball similar they do. And for a long time they've been correct," Ocasio-Cortez tweeted. "But practise non permit them corking the public into thinking their bulldozing is normal merely a response isn't. At that place is a legal process for expansion."
In the face up of a 6–3 Bourgeois bulk, folks like Representative Ocasio-Cortez contend that the Supreme Court is out of remainder — and, more than that, information technology isn't quite reflective of the American people's concerns and values. And so much lies in the hands of the courtroom: the fate of the Affordable Care Act, Roe v. Wade and marriage equality, just to proper noun a few. At present, we'll just have to see if this imbalance — and Barrett's speedy appointment — are enough to convince President Biden and members of Congress to seriously consider a Supreme Courtroom expansion.
Source: https://www.ask.com/culture/ask-answers-expand-supreme-court?utm_content=params%3Ao%3D740004%26ad%3DdirN%26qo%3DserpIndex
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