Saving Nine

From the Introduction...

“I have heard that there are some people on the Democratic side who would like to increase the number of judges. I think that was a bad idea when President Franklin Delano Roosevelt tried to pack the court.”

— Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg

When the late Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg made that comment in an interview in 2019, it wasn’t particularly controversial. But by the next year, those comments would have placed this particular liberal icon at odds with many— in fact most— of her ideological pals. In 2020, we lost Justice Ginsburg, and many Democrats began to lose their minds. That year on the campaign trail, Joe Biden, the Democratic presidential nominee, refused on many occasions to rule out packing the court. Other members of his party said the Supreme Court was “broken” and “actively dismantling our democracy.” As president, Biden appointed a committee to examine “reforms” to the Court, which signaled to many that he was inclined to support the drastic “reform” of Court packing. When that commission published its report in 2021, it avoided making any concrete recommendations, but it subtly advanced the cause by refusing to condemn expanding the Court in the future. Voices on the Left in and out of government quickly took up the mantle of Court expansion.

How did things change so quickly? Through the course of this book, I’m going to explore this question, and hopefully provide a defense for a nine- justice Court. I hope as well to outline the dangerous norm- shattering precedent that would be set by politically motivated attempts to turn the Supreme Court into just another partisan weapon.