If you can pack the Supreme Court, why can’t you unpack it? This isn’t my idea; it’s National Review’s idea.
“The Case for Shrinking the Supreme Court
By MICHAEL STOKES PAULSEN October 19, 2016 8:00 AM
Congress should strike a blow against judicial activism and for political comity by reducing the size of the Court .
Senator John McCain made minor headlines this week by stating that a Republican Senate might well be justified in refusing to confirm any nomination that a president Hillary Clinton might make to the Supreme Court. The only problem with such a statement is that it does not go far enough: The Senate should decline to confirm any nominee, regardless of who is elected. More than that, it is time to shrink the size of the Supreme Court.
Congress should pass a law reducing the Court’s membership to six Justices rather than nine — a return to its original size — and in so doing both take the question of Supreme Court appointments off the table for this election cycle and also thereby reduce the capability of the Court to engage in judicial activism harmful to the Constitution. And if the president vetoed such a bill, the Senate should accomplish the same thing by acting on its own, as an exercise of its ‘advice and consent’ power.”
Comment: Okay, so that’s all I’m going to quote, because copyright, and fair use only allows you to cut-and-paste enough for nonprofit educational use, which is what we’re going to do here. You can read the entire article for free here.
The point is, here you have America’s leading conservative magazine arguing that if Hillary Clinton became president, she shouldn’t be allowed to appoint any Supreme Court justices, period. Not just in election years. That’s Lindsey Graham on steroids.
Shrinking the Court from nine to six justices might not be such a bad idea, though. Assuming it was done on a seniority basis, it would get rid of all three of Trump’s appointees. I could live with that.
Perhaps we should wish for Congress to take longer vacations.
Senator Harris brought up Lincoln’s last pick for the Supreme Court. He replaced five justices, so was a successful court packer. She noted that he did not announce his last pick for President until after the election inferring this was the proper way of things. This is simply not true. The Justice that dies Was Chief Justice Taney the author of Dred Scott. I cannot believe that Lincoln held off nominating a replacement. Taney Dred Scott was a primary cause of the bloody civil war. A decision Lincoln was already looking forward to discrediting by the 13th amendment to the constitution.
The reason Lincoln waited was that the Senate was not in session and was not in session until December 12, when Lincoln made his nomination and the Senate confirmed the next day.
So maybe Congress should not be in session this close to an election, maybe Congress should take a break beginning August 1 in election years. The American public would be spared a great deal of theatre. Perhaps we would feel deprived and demand Congress get back to work.
Your argument is irrelevant. I didn’t mention Lincoln or Harris in this article, and this is 2020, not 1864. Republicans abandoned comity and exerted raw power to slant the courts their way. Why, then, shouldn’t the Democrats do the same when they’re in power? Don’t expect one party to exercise restraint when the other doesn’t. I’m not saying that’s good; it’s the reality that Republicans created when they systematically obstructed Obama’s judicial appointments and then ruthlessly exploited those vacancies for their own gain.