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Edited by Mrph1 on Nov 30th 2023 at 11:03:59 AM
If that's true then there need to be less Republican senators crossing the aisle or abstaining to block a confirmation.
The other thing is that the choice of the pick is up to Trump, who could pick someone that the Senate Republicans either can't stomach or something so blatantly corrupt no one up for re-election could support it and not lose in a landslide (like if Trump goes full insane and puts forth one of his children as the candidate).
I think court packing would be a poisoned apple for the Democrats in the end. It would open the gate for a court packing war over the next decade, with the Republicans pulling the exact same stunt once they are back in power.
I find it telling that the Republicans and Trump themselves have not packed the courts before, which they apparently could have done since it seems very straightforward from what people here are saying.
Hope shines brightest in the darkest timesWhat are you talking about? They packed the court in 2016 by refusing to even vote on Obama’s nominee, they packed the court by removing the filibuster of the Supreme Court.
Republicans have successfully packed the court and you’re saying Democrats shouldn’t pack it back because they’d have to use a slightly different method to do it?
Thousands will die (not hyperbole, abortion being outlawed will results in thousands of deaths from either childbirth or backstreet abortions) if the Republicans are allowed a 6-3 majority, Democrats have a responsibility to stop Republicans from killing so many innocents.
Edited by Silasw on Sep 19th 2020 at 10:02:45 AM
“And the Bunny nails it!” ~ Gabrael “If the UN can get through a day without everyone strangling everyone else so can we.” ~ Cyran![]()
I'd say the Godzilla Threshold is in play here. Republicans didn't want to make their power grab too obvious, but democrats now need to do something big to save democracy.
Also
Edited by ShinyCottonCandy on Sep 19th 2020 at 6:01:33 AM
My musician page2016 was not court packing and people need to stop claiming that it was. "Court packing" has a specific meaning - expanding the size of the court in order to appoint new judges - and delaying filling in a vacancy in order to have a more favourable political constellation is not packing.
"For a successful technology, reality must take precedence over public relations, for Nature cannot be fooled." - Richard Feynman
x5 Counterpoint: The Republicans have already packed the courts over the past four years thanks to them refusing to vote for anyone Obama nominated in his last two years. And as others have said they haven't needed to add more than 9 justices to the SC because they already have a conservative majority.
Saying "The Democrats shouldn't do X since that'll just open it up for the Republicans to do the same" is a worthless argument since the Republicans have shown time and time again that they will just do X anyway if that was politically advantageous for them to do so (see them abolishing the filibuster for appointing judges). They admitted back in 2016 that had they kept the Senate and Hilary gotten the white house they would have refused to vote for any judge she nominated for up to four years.
Alright then, the Republicans have been court stacking for four years thanks to all the open positions that happened in the last two years of Obama's term that they refused to let him fill.
Edited by Shaoken on Sep 19th 2020 at 8:04:43 PM
Yeah it’s delusional to think that if Obama has somehow gotten Garland onto the court Republicans wouldn’t have increased the court size in 2017 when they had a trifecta.
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The two actions are functionally the same, changing the rules around how the Supreme Court operates so as to secure a majority on the court for your party. Call it something other than packing if you want, but that’s pure semantics.
Edited by Silasw on Sep 19th 2020 at 10:05:41 AM
“And the Bunny nails it!” ~ Gabrael “If the UN can get through a day without everyone strangling everyone else so can we.” ~ CyranIt doesn't matter whether they are "functionally" the same. For one thing, increasing the size carries the implication of cheating much more so than holding an existing seat open. For the other thing, holding a seat open is not "changing the rules".
"For a successful technology, reality must take precedence over public relations, for Nature cannot be fooled." - Richard FeynmanIt's also important to keep in mind that if we can win the Senate as well as the White House (and, very likely, get rid of the legislative filibuster), one of the first orders of business will be passing the For the People Act and a number of other bills (like the new Voting Rights Act in honor of John Lewis, and some others) that will address campaign finance reform, voter suppression and gerrymandering, and more. If this does succeed, that will make it very, very difficult for Republicans to ever have power again, not without changing their "policies" to appeal to a real majority, anyway. So then the worries about the Republicans using court packing against us will become moot. By the reverse token, if we don't pack the court, then anything a Democratic Congress and White House passes (whether related to voting, climate change, or anything else of major importance) has a very good chance of being overturned. Meaning if we don't pack the court, nothing we want to achieve will be done even if the Blue Wave does succeed, and then it won't matter one bit about future court packing from the other side.
TL;DR: If it's between the nebulous possible danger of Republican court packing retaliation in the future, or the nearly certain danger of not being able to pass and keep in place important legislation in 2021's Congress, I'd rather risk the first.
I do think the issue with court packing is that it opens the door to ever increasing numbers of Supreme Court Justices whenever the Senate & Presidency change hands, but I'm not sure what the solution to that would be. If Trump appoints a third justice, though, the status quo really cannot be allowed to stand.
Actually, I think the most important thing the laws would need to do is to make sure that the court cannot change its opinion on Arizona State Legislature v. Arizona Independent Redistricting Commission
, otherwise you'll see a mega expansion of gerrymandering that would be hard to undo.
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Those are some very big ifs, though. If those "ifs" don't materialize, court packing could spark a tug of war over the SC, and that would end up damaging their legitimacy. So would court packing in the first place, which is probably why Republicans have stayed away from that idea while they didn't need to do it.
It would also shatter any remaining idea of the court being apolitical. It would officially be at the mercy of whatever party is in power.
Edited by Redmess on Sep 19th 2020 at 12:21:17 PM
Hope shines brightest in the darkest times![]()
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Yep, Democrats have at least 3 bills (Voting Rights Advancement, For the People, DC Statehood), that should address some of the most egregious holes in our democracy. It is a bit optimistic, though, in my opinion, to say that it would prevent Republicans from ever holding power again.
Part of the problem with the courts is I don't trust a 6-3 conservative majority to uphold electoral reforms.
Edit:
I'd argue the legitimacy of the courts was already damaged, with Kavanaugh, Gorsuch/Garland and whoever Trump nominates. Their nonpolitical stance also comes into question with their rulings on voting rights/election stuff.
And we can't let Republicans continually erode away democracy out of fear that if Democrats try to remedy it, they'll just destroy it faster.
Edited by nova92 on Sep 19th 2020 at 3:23:02 AM
The SC doesn’t deserve the legitimacy it has, it rigged the election in 2000, it threw out the voting rights act and it passed Citizens United.
I’ll take a Supreme Court with no legitimacy over one that reauthorises Jim-Crow.
“And the Bunny nails it!” ~ Gabrael “If the UN can get through a day without everyone strangling everyone else so can we.” ~ CyranHonestly, let's not pretend the Supreme Court is a sacred, inviolable institution. America hoped that was the case and we got four years of Trump sh**ing all over the Oval Office for it; if we cross our fingers and hope really hard the Republicans won't gouge this opportunity for all it's worth, we'll get the Supreme Court doing the same for a generation.
It's been fun.I get that court packing is pretty much a necessity now, but I think it could end up backfiring by emboldening Republicans to cheat even more. In a way, the Republicans have been playing by the rules: they did not simply pack the courts as soon as Trump was elected (or Kavanaugh, for that matter) to stack the deck even more in their favour. That was a bridge they were not willing to cross. But once Democrats open that can of worms, Republicans will have their excuse for next time they are in power, and they could simply stack it back up immediately after the election, rather than politely wait for a judge to die like they have done until now.
Demolishing the legitimacy of yet another US institution even further to protect democracy is a dangerous path to walk.
Hope shines brightest in the darkest times
The difference is, republicans could afford to take their time. Now, democrats can't.
With the high number of conservative justices put into the higher courts, especially the number of them with little experience appointed because they matched Mitch's conservative ideologies, there is a very real risk that any progressive policies or laws that Democrats pass will get gutted and overturned by conservative judges and then upheld by a conservative Supreme Court for the next generation.
And again, look at the number of norms, institutions and processes the Republicans have torn up and pissed over these past few years. The Republicans have already proven that they will already cheat whenever they can without any precedent from Democrats as justification. There's no point basing decisions off "if we do this then that opens the door for the Republicans to cheat" since the Republicans are going to cheat anyway.
@ Redmess: The thing is, if none of those "ifs" come to pass, either we won't even be in a position to pack the courts (we didn't win the election), or the things we're worried an extremely right-wing court would overturn wouldn't have been passed in the first place for whichever reason, in which case there'd be no way to keep Republicans from coming to power and critical legislation would not have been passed, so packing the court would be mostly pointless. (Mostly, because we'd still want to try and stop them from overturning existing rights and legislation.) So to a great extent, discussing court packing isn't even relevant without those "ifs".
And as several people have already stated, the SC has already lost its legitimacy. I also really can't see what they could possibly do in a court packing retaliation than would be worse than what they're doing right now, and have been for the last four years. And finally, if we do win the election, then whether or not we pack the court, and whether or not that affects its legitimacy, a Dem Senate and House, plus Biden, can at least work on restoring the legitimacy of the legislative and executive branches.
@ nova: That's true. But as you yourself say, the worry is what such a court would do to electoral reform. If we pass it, there's still a chance Republicans could come back to power in the future, but if we don't pass it, we know for sure they will. And the same is true if we pass it but it gets overturned by the SC, which brings us back to court packing.
This.
Edited by Ingonyama on Sep 19th 2020 at 3:58:33 AM

To bring things away from doom, I have a question about the voting in the Senate. Let's say that Trump nominates Ted Cruz for the seat. Ted is currently a sitting senator, does he have to vacate his seat before being nominated, and if he doesn't does he have to abstain from the vote on his own confirmation?