Court packing was last done by FDR to ensure his progressive policies survived courtroom challenges.
Eric Thayer/Getty Images
Faced with the prospect of yet another seat on the Supreme Court being nominated and approved by Republicans, some on the far-left are invoking the specter of ‘court packing’ as a way to ensure that progressive policies aren’t sabotaged in the high court.
Last used as a strategy by President Franklin Roosevelt, packing is a strategy where the president proposes added seats on the bench to bolster the number of favorable votes their party or administration might receive on any decision. The last time it was proposed, it would have added six seats to the highest court in the country.
There’s just one problem for the socialists who are advocating this oft-maligned approach: President Trump and Congressional Republicans hold all the cards, and there is no sign of that changing anytime soon.
Yet the avowed socialist publication Jacobin still advocates that “it’s time” this stratagem be employed.
Referring to circumstances in which the progressive presidential icon threatened the Supreme Court with packing to get his policies through their chambers unscathed, the piece seems to suggest the ends justify the means – as long as the ends are progressive ones:
The effect of FDR’s threat was immediate. Within weeks, in what came to be called “the switch in time that saved nine,” the two swing votes joined with the three liberals to uphold the Wagner Act and Washington State’s minimum wage law.
Of course, this same publication described a modern centrist jurist who was well known as the present-day swing vote as ‘useless’:
Good riddance, Anthony Kennedy, to you and your supposedly swing vote to which liberals long tried to kowtow, almost always in vain. https://t.co/m9F52mED3L
— Jacobin (@jacobinmag) June 28,2018
Kennedy, whose retirement is prompting all this hubbub, was the darling of the left when his swing vote oscillated towards favoring gay rights, but he became their foe on issues where his opinions on the First Amendment opened up campaign finance as an issue for corporations.
If there was one area where Kennedy was consistent, writes Princeton professor Keith Whittington, it was with the protection of those First Amendment rights, moderated with a healthy skepticism of the role of government. Since progressive policies rely on complete trust that government is the solution to problems, that doesn’t sit well with them.
While most on the left agree that nothing can be done to prevent the appointment of another conservative justice to the Supreme Court, their sole hope lies in President Trump nominating someone who is clearly not fit for the bench.
But since Trump has already advertised the list that he intends to nominate from will be similar to the one from which he pulled Justice Neil Gorsuch’s name, that prospect seems unlikely.
