most anti-court expansion arguments depend on pretending not to notice a 40 year conservative effort to make the judiciary a permanent veto point for progressive lawmaking
“installing right-wing judges is so critical to the conservative project that the entire movement united behind a white supremacist demagogue to accelerate and complete the project and also HOW DARE you try to do anything about it!”
“if a vestigial organ of the constitution unexpectedly gives us power without support from most voters, then of course we have the right to turn a whole branch of government into a permanent redoubt for our partisan & ideological interests & it would be unfair of you to stop us.”
“everything explicitly allowed under the constitution is fair game unless it would stand in the way of our decades-long ideological crusade in which case it is a THREAT TO THE REPUBLIC ITSELF”
anyway let us not forget that when it appeared clinton would win Senate Rs openly discussed keeping the Court at 8 members to preserve a conservative majority which would presumably stand in the way of whatever a Clinton administration tried to do.
https://twitter.com/parkermolloy/status/1315017636569382913
my final point is that this isn’t actually a question of principle, it is a question of power. if your view is “the only constraint on our ability to wield power is the text of the constitution” then you have no grounds to challenge your opponents when they say the same.
and critically, no one has to take your objections seriously.
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