Pros And Cons Of Packing The Supreme Court

Samad Quraishi

Mr. Mesa

US/VA Government Honors

11 January 2023

Prompt: Is "court-packing" an appropriate response to criticisms directed at the United States Supreme Court?

Packing the Supreme Court (SCOTUS) is a bad idea. SCOTUS has been the highest court of the land throughout our country's history. They have the power to determine whether a law is Constitutional or not, yet in recent years the court has become overwhelmingly conservative and politicized. The legislative and the executive branch play major roles in choosing who gets to be on SCOTUS, as the President has the power to nominate justices, and the Senate has the power to confirm them. In recent years, the politics of the Presidency and the Senate have begun to affect SCOTUS. Senate Leader McConnell

Upon the death of Ruth Bader Ginsburg, a liberal justice, McConnell saw an opportunity to put in another conservative justice, even though it was closer to the election. This hypocrisy from the Republican party is a political move for them to gain more power across the government. The Constitution does not state the number of SCOTUS justices there can be. If the President wanted, he could nominate dozens of liberal justices and have most of the Senate confirm them so that their political party could be benefited. SCOTUS was never meant to be politicized, and if it continues to be, this will create massive swings on what the law is for our country. It is a separate branch of government that is meant to interpret the law. Throughout the course of American history, it has largely remained apolitical. The law is supposed to move slowly, and not change every four years. In 1937, Franklin Roosevelt had a bill which would have allowed him to appoint six additional justices to SCOTUS, which would increase the number of justices from nine to fifteen. This was made in order for his political party to have their liberal ideology represented on the high court, as the court's ideology was viewed as