Should Packing the U.S. Supreme Court Ever Be Considered?
Court packing is the act of increasing the number of seats on a court to change its ideological makeup. Most frequently, court packing refers to adding members to the U.S. Supreme Court, which currently has nine justices, to alter its political orientation. The U.S. Constitution does not dictate the number of justices on the Supreme Court. For more on court packing, explore the ProCon debate.
PRO (yes)
CON (no)
Con
“If we start the process of trying to expand the court, we’re going to politicize it maybe forever in a way that is not healthy.”
-Holly Otterbein and Zach Montellaro, “Biden Still Won’t Nuke the Court. But He Is Upping His Criticism of It.,” politico.com, June 30, 2023
Con
I “wouldn’t entertain that [idea]…. The only reason they’re [Democrats] doing that is they want to try to catch up, so if they can’t catch up through the ballot box by winning an election they want to try doing it in a different way [by court packing].”
-Ginger Gibson, “Trump Rejects Idea of Expanding U.S. Supreme Court,” reuters.com, Mar. 19, 2019