The Supreme Court upset more than a handful of lawmakers and activists on the American left with several of the recent rulings from its latest term. Now, Democrats are reviving their calls to “pack the court,” hoping to pressure Congress and the president to expand the high court and fill the new vacancies with justices who line up with the party’s worldview.
The court’s rulings in several high-profile cases — including Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization, New York State Rifle & Pistol Association Inc. v. Bruen, Kennedy v. Bremerton School District, and West Virginia v. Environmental Protection Agency — led to repeated criticism of the “conservative” court. Activists on the left renewed their demands that the Democratic Party, while it has control of both houses of Congress and the White House, add seats to the Supreme Court and fill them with political allies.
Control of federal courts, particularly the high court, is one of the biggest political issues for both parties. Justices serve lifetime appointments, so they have the potential to issue rulings for decades that will impact multiple generations.
Changing the size of the Supreme Court is not unheard of. The U.S. Constitution set no limit on the size of the court, which means the decision is up to Congress. In fact, Congress has acted to expand or contract the size of the court seven times in U.S. history, according to the Constitution Center.
The high court was initially designed in 1789 to have a chief justice and five associate justices. Since then, the court has had as few as five justices, which it did during the time of President John Adams. At its largest, the court had 10 justices under President Abraham Lincoln during the Civil War.
The number of Supreme Court justices has remained at nine since 1869, though President Franklin D. Roosevelt did threaten to pack the court in 1937 after suffering a unanimous defeat on one of his Depression-era programs.
Democrats note that since 1869, the U.S. population has grown more than 10-fold, which they say justifies expanding the size of the court.
Republicans, on the other hand, see the push as a purely political maneuver by a party that has had failed to secure legislative wins and hopes to see its agenda enacted via judicial fiat.
One person Democrats need to get on board but have failed to secure support from so far is President Joe Biden. He has repeatedly stated that he opposes expanding the Supreme Court, and he reiterated that stance last week, even in the wake of the Bruen and Dobbs rulings, ABC News reported.
