- cross-posted to:
- socialism@beehaw.org
- cross-posted to:
- socialism@beehaw.org
President Biden said he won’t expand the Supreme Court because doing so would “politicize” the court in an unhealthy way. But it’s a political institution by its nature — and a disturbingly undemocratic one.
Wouldn’t it just turn into every new president expanding the court until it benefits them? What’s the limit? Honestly asking IDK.
We should probably just abolish the court as it has no functional value anyways.
The fact is, Republicans effectively stole to supreme Court seats based on legislative tactics. This is basically unprecedented.
I actually think expanding the Supreme Court should be a long-term project: one new seat per presidential term, until the court has a total of 15 seats in 2044 (15 being a number I pulled out of my ass, just seems like a good size to me). That’s a slow enough rollout that it can’t be accused of one party stuffing the court, and it’s fair because it gives several future presidents a say. Is that sufficiently ‘non-politicized’?
Not that this kind of compromise would be acceptable to the other side anyway, they’ll call foul no matter what because they’re winning right now and won’t accept anything that could potentially challenge that.
not an american, so i have no real… uh… i was gonna say skin in the game but tbh the whole western world has skin in the game… regardless:
if that were to happen i’d say it’d get to a point where the number of justices deadlocks the court, and either makes it entirely symbolic or there’s a bipartisan agreement that something needs to be fixed and that’s how you get systemic change
Yup. The only limit is the American population of judges, that is until they figure out how to outsource it. As American democracy deteriorates further, people want to break down institutions and the separation of powers in order to give more power to the executive. Because currently, that benefits them. At every step of the way both Rs and Ds will justify their powergrabs by saying the other would’ve done it. What could possibly go wrong?
There’s a solid argument that the number should be 15.