While the president’s commission on Supreme Court reform warned that there were strong disagreements over so-called “court packing” – under which Congress would expand the number of justices from its current nine members to something much more – that has not deterred Massachusetts Sen. Elizabeth Warren.
Far from it. Before the end of the year, Warren gave her full endorsement to adding four new justices to counter what she sees as a GOP hijacking of the court:
To restore balance and integrity to a broken institution, Congress must expand the Supreme Court by four or more seats.
Some oppose the idea of court expansion. They have argued that expansion is “court-packing,” that it would start a never-ending cycle of adding justices to the bench, and that it would undermine the court’s integrity.
They are wrong. And their concerns do not reflect the gravity of the Republican hijacking of the Supreme Court.
“Balance and integrity” are nice sounding words. But the reality, as Charles Cooke wrote, is Warren is interested only in advancing her own partisan goals:
Why “four or more”? Because Elizabeth Warren likes three of the current justices and dislikes six of the current justices (one of whom has been there for more than thirty years; two of whom have been there for more than 15 years), and because adding four or more new justices would ensure that the people she likes would have a majority.
That’s it. That’s the case.
There are worse cases (probably) for an expanded Supreme Court membership. The bottom line is Congress has, and could if it wanted to, expand or reduce the number of justices, and it would all be completely constitutional. The nine member court we have is not set in constitutional stone.
But would it be right for it to do so? That’s a political question. And as Sen. Warren has framed her views, it’s 100 percent Team Blue politics driving her desire for new justices. Not balance. Not integrity. Raw politics. And that’s a terrible reason to expand the court.