pyetro
Diamond Member
- Jul 21, 2019
- 5,538
- 5,751
- 1,940
And FDR wanted to expand it but failed.
Congress has the authority to court-pack, even for political reasons.
Every time the court was expanded, it was for political reasons:
Congress has the authority to court-pack, even for political reasons.
Every time the court was expanded, it was for political reasons:
When Chief Justice John Marshall wrote Marbury v. Madison, he sat as one of six members of the fully-staffed Supreme Court. President John Adams and a lame-duck Federalist Party congressional majority shrank the size of the Court from six to five in 1801 to limit Thomas Jefferson’s appointments to the bench. The new Democratic-Republican majority under President Jefferson quickly restored the sixth seat and expanded the Court to seven seats in 1807 when Congress created a seventh circuit court.
Congress expanded the Court from seven to nine members under Andrew Jackson in 1837. And thirty years later, during the midst of the U.S. Civil War, President Abraham Lincoln named a tenth justice to the Supreme Court, apparently motivated partly by a desire to ensure the Court would not interfere with Union war tactics.
Congress’s actions to shrink the Supreme Court from ten to seven immediately after the war were even more nakedly partisan. Congress denied President Andrew Johnson the ability to nominate justices who might oppose the congressional Reconstruction plan. President Ulysses Grant increased the Court back to nine seats after it ruled “greenback” paper currency unconstitutional, giving him two extra appointments. The newly constituted Court reheard the case and reversed.
Harvard Law & Policy Review
harvardlpr.com