He doesn’t want to go down in history as a giant partisan asshole. He wants to make conservative rulings but the cases need to be brought up to him in the correct manner.
And the cases need to be ones where you can look at the conservative side and go “Well, I really disagree with this, but I can see why or how a reasonable human being could agree to this”, instead of “What the fucking fuck is wrong with the gibbering lunatics who are pushing this heinous bullshit?!?”
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Yeah, Congress sets the number, I “know” that, but at the same time it “feels” like the President does it as the nominees are selected by him (or someday her).
I guess Congress could pass a law that changes the number from say 9 to 11 or 15 and also makes it so future changes can only take effect with an 8 year lead time unless approved by a 2/3rd super majority of congress.
That might not end the game, but it would make the next moves harder.
Edit, added:
It seems bizarre to me that anyone would choose an even number (see also the original size of 6, although I’m not sure the original framers thought the SC would interpret laws, the few histories I have read about the early court said that was novel…)
(even, yes, I’m over my shock now)
Also I knew it had been changed before, and vaguely knew that included down, I assume they didn’t remove justices but just were unable to replace any until the court fell below the “new” size? I should go look that up.
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Well given the recent dirty dealing by the GOP with the supreme court and other judges - denying Obama’s appointment, and flooding judicial appointments after stonewalling Obama on the same – I think the next Democratic President should raise the number of justices to the maximum, which I thought was 15, and fill it with young liberal justices, so it will take decades for the GOP to undo it. In fact the GOP should be history by then.
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I don’t think 15 is the max, I think it was in a specific proposal:
President Franklin D. Roosevelt attempted to expand the Court in 1937. His proposal envisioned appointment of one additional justice for each incumbent justice who reached the age of 70 years 6 months and refused retirement, up to a maximum bench of 15 justices. The proposal was ostensibly to ease the burden of the docket on elderly judges, but the actual purpose was widely understood as an effort to “pack” the Court with justices who would support Roosevelt’s New Deal.[78] The plan, usually called the “court-packing plan”, failed in Congress.
(from Wikipedia)
I don’t see reference to a fixed size limit, so going to 15 would allow a future republican to pick a larger number.
It might be possible to pass a law requiring a super majority of congress to go past a specific limit. I don’t know if it has been established the congress has the power to limit itself (or really future iterations of itself) in that way though. That might take an amendment, and while I think it is reasonable that Democrats may take the house and congress and the presidency, I’m not so sure they will also take enough states legislatures to pass amendments that are directly to shore up democratic power.
It might be worth a shot on trying to self limit future expansions of the SC by congress though.
(also in my prior post I wondered about reducing the size of the SC, it is indeed not retroactive, it reduced the size of the court by attrition)
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Well, it IS a prime number, and that’s pretty magical!
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Prime number? Check your math.
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OMG, my brain is mush! In my defense, I’m fielding phone calls, texts, and emails at frightening velocity right now.
Obviously, I meant the opposite: 9 is a perfect square. I find perfect squares to be magical. Well, math in general, despite the fact that I’m clearly losing it in my old age.
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Actually 9 does have some magical properties - I was always fascinated that any number that can be factored by 9 you can get 9 by adding its digits - as in 27: 2+7=9, 99: 9+9=18, 1+8=9. Go ahead - try it, any number evenly divisible by 9.
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1+1=3 for sufficiently large values of 1. And 9 is prime for appropriate values of 3. Didn’t XKCD deal with this?
One way to fix a biased court: age-ranked voting. The older a SCOTUS justice, the more their vote is worth. Youngsters only have provisional votes. Or maybe it’s integral. Let’s have 7 justices with the oldest casting 7 votes and the youngest only 1. The two oldest with 13 votes can be overruled by the five youngest with 15 votes. Coalitions will be interesting.
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You can also do it with your hands on the table in front of you, which gives a physical representation of how it works (in power of 10, obviously).
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