Education Time!

Kids if there is one thing I get truly excited about it’s talking to smart people. The reason why is I learn so damn much. I know this shatters your image of me as a Hermione Granger-like insufferable know-it-all but bear with me you are in for a treat.

You likely heard in the news this week that the Democrats in their ever lustful grab for power and getting their way (which is the ONLY way damn it and you will see it) that senior members of the House have drafted a bill to expand the Supreme Court to 13 members. The idea being of course that since they control the Presidency and the Senate they would then select four liberal justices and return their version of sanity to the court. (They should remember that Republicans want to smack John Roberts all the time, so be careful what you wish for). Random side note – House Speaker Nancy Pelosi has said she won’t bring the bill to the floor (well, we shall see), so shame on Fox New for endlessly droning on about this as if it’s going to happen tomorrow, a “scare your viewers” tactic taken straight from the CNN playbook. Ass clowns.

So what is this whole court packing bullshit? To find out more I’ve turned to my good friend John Hill, all around good dude and professor of constitutional law at the IU Robert H. McKinney School of Law in Indianapolis. I highly recommend you click here to see John’s qualifications, and bio, I submit to the jurors that he’s a pretty smart guy:

https://mckinneylaw.iu.edu/faculty-staff/profile.html?Id=172

Or just trust me on this and look at this guy. How could you not think he’s smarter than most of us. OK, all of us.

Thanks John for your essay, here it is kids – read up and be more educated than any Democrat in the room!

Packing the Court:

Technically Not Unconstitutional – Just A Really, Really Stupid Idea

            Nowhere in the Constitution does it specify how many Supreme Court justices we should have.  The first major act of the first Congress was the Judiciary Act of 1789. It created the federal court system.  The Judiciary Act set the number of justices at six – a Chief Justice and five Associate Justices. (In fact, the Constitution says nothing about a Chief Justice).  Like much in the early days, things had to be improvised.  In fact, during those days, the Court only met about six weeks a year. All the Justices lived in the same boarding house. They ate breakfast together and, at the end of the day, as they discussed their cases, they had drinks and played cards.   

 As the nation grew, more justices were added.  This was not simply a matter of the size or population of the country. As the nation grew westward, new circuit courts of appeals were added.  In the beginning, the justices themselves “rode circuit” when the Court was not in session.  Each justice participated in lower court decisions with each justice assigned a circuit.   In 1801, with the retirement of one justice, the outgoing Federalists reduced the number to five to limit President Jefferson’s power of appointment.  But the Democratic-Republicans in Congress quickly repealed this statute, restoring the number to six. 

In 1807, a seventh justice was added ostensibly because Congress had created a seventh circuit court of appeals.  In 1837, two more circuits were added and two justices with it, making the number nine.  But during the Civil War, in 1863, a tenth justice was briefly added.  Three years later, in 1866, Congress reduced the number to seven. In 1869, with Ulysses S. Grant in office, the Republican Congress added two more justices, once again making the number nine.

Nine has been the accepted number since this time. 

When FDR wanted to pack the Court in 1937 to add six more justices for a total of 15 (on the pretense that there were six justices over the age of seventy who “needed help,”) even most of the Democrats rejected the plan as going way too far. Then the Senator who was leading the charge for FDR had a heart attack and died the night before a big vote. (Wonder if that might happen again, Schumer?)  

Why nine? Because that is the number we have had now for 150 years. It is accepted. And people understand that if one party starts adding their justices to reach the political conclusions they want, the other party will do the same next time they are in power.  The real loser in this, of course, is the Constitution itself.  Once the whole thing has been politicized in this way, who will take any constitutional precedent seriously?  In fact, the very idea of constitutional law will be a joke. And once everyone understands that it’s all politics, why do we need a Court of politicians to second-guess another miserable brood of politicians known by the collective name “Congress?”