Court Packing 2 Make Founding Fathers Puke

Letter to Romans: It’s been argued the Constitution lets Congress set the Supreme Court’s SIZE & is silent about packing it strictly for ideological advantage. It HAS been done before. Yet, the Justices have never green lit the cynical ploy. Would the Founding Fathers?

James Piereson asks a similar question in his WSJ op ed titled, “Is Court Packing Constitutional?” He warns “Don’t Be So Sure” the Democrats wanting to do so will get their way in the end since the Supremes have never pointedly addressed the issue. Surely, as Piereson argues, packing the Highest Court by a political party just to gain political control over its rulings “would be an assault” on the Constitution’s Separation of Powers clauses & independence of the Court itself. That being the case, wouldn’t the “constitutional originalists” aka Justices Alito & Thomas lead a charge against it once the inevitable lawsuit reached it? And would they not invoke the Founding Fathers’ likely views on the issue?

As a fellow originalist Abe Lincoln once acknowledged, the US Constitution did not address every singly future issue that would emerge. For instance, Abe noted in the lead up to Civil War, there was nothing written in the Constitution specifically prohibiting the Southern Slave States from seceding from the Union. Yet, Lincoln implied such a bar on common sense grounds. And since 1937, the last time Congress fiddled with the High Court’s make up, an implied TABOO on ever again doing so has been acknowledged by every succeeding Congress since. Yes, even when progressives dominated the Supreme Court for decades. If it’s ever tried again, would most of today’s more conservative Justices decide like Lincoln that the Founding Fathers impliedly intended that the Supreme Court, like all other branches, be as FREE of ideological power struggles as possible? Why else would they have so carefully woven “checks & balances” throughout the Constitution? Might the majority use their Lincolnian common sense, then, to conclude the soundest interpretation of the Founding Fathers’ Constitution be that the Court’s NINE Justice approach since WWII turned out to be the fairest & most effective and should continue as is?

Davd Soul