A court with more judges would water down the influence of any extremists.
But yes, packing the court alone doesn’t guaruntee the court can’t be captured again. What Elie Mystal suggested way back when the court majority had flipped was basically two things that should happen:
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expand the court by alot, maybe somewhere within 20-30, similar to the 9th circuit that’s just below the Supreme Court. This helps dilute the power of individual crazies like Alito and then
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Rotate judges out routinely to other federal positions. This allows for their life-time appointment still, but ensures also that, due to the high number of justices, every administration is getting an opportunity to appoint a few judges every time. That revolving door means it wpuld require multiple far-right administrations to pin the court down like it is now.
There’s no reason the court needs to be nine justices, we’ve had more and less throughout our history as a nation, and there’s no reason that the courts power needs to be concentrated into the hands of so few individuals, since the purpose of the court is suppose to be a moderating force of legal scholars, not an explicitly partisan body.
None of this addresses my point. There isn’t the political power to do it.
And even if there was, the court has already essentially overturned precedent as a concept. That can’t just be rolled back without completely reworking the court, which…see my first point…
There isn’t the political power to do it.
That’s the entire problem, full stop. This wouldn’t even have gotten to SCOTUS if Congress would have held POTUS accountable via impeachment. The reason Congress didn’t is partially due to political pressure from voters but mostly because the HoR is far too small to adequately represent 300,000,000 people.
Yes, it depends up getting people out to vote, especially in mid-terms.
Precedent is literally just a tradition that’s agreed upon, there’s nothing binding judges to adhere to it, which is why the supreme court was so easily able to ignore it.
So in that sense it’s a double-edged sword, it’s just as easy for judges to rule by precedent as it is for them to not, it’s always been this way.
