Why We Should Not Pack the Court

Packing the court has been an idea around since the 1936 election, but has since been popping up again in wake of this year’s election. Many people have extremely strong opinions on this controversial issue, and many more people do not know much about the issue.

Court packing is the idea that the acting president has the right or ability to add justices the Supreme Court, at a number that he gets to choose. This idea has not been very popular throughout the time of it being around, but people are beginning to talk about daily in the media world.

Former Vice President, Joe Biden has said that he will not share his opinion on court packing until after the election. That is not fair to the voters who are still undecided on who they are voting for. Court packing is one of the big issues being decided upon in this years election, and to not share an opinion on it is a disrespect to the voters in the middle.

But the idea of adding justices is just plain bad no matter how you twist it. Right now the Supreme Court has nine justices. A number that has been thrown out there has been adding four to make it thirteen justices. The problem with adding justices to give the Supreme Court’s power to your party is that nothing is stopping the other party from doing the same when they get their next president.

The Supreme Court is supposed to be based on trust and justice, and there is nothing just or fair about trying to give yourself an advantage where no one else has ever tried to do it. There is a reason packing the court has never taken place, even though presidents have been able to do it since the 1930’s. Packing the court is nothing more then a particular party trying to take control where they do not have power.

The late Ruth Bader Ginsburg also did not support packing the court for the things stated above. Ginsburg stated, “If anything would make the Court look partisan,” Ginsburg said, “it would be that—one side saying, ‘When we’re in power, we’re going to enlarge the number of judges, so we would have more people who would vote the way we want them to’”

To paraphrase, she and many Americans do not want the Supreme Court to be weaponized against parties. A nuclear arms race of adding judges to gain control will only make Americans lose trust in an already failing system. The trust of Americans is key to the idea of court packing and this upcoming election. We are voting on trusting our system of government for the future. That is why this election is so important, and the idea of court packing is no exception.

Americans today more then past recent elections are voting on their future. Knowledge is power and Americans deserve answers to the questions on their mind. Hopefully in the upcoming town hall we will get answers.