Supreme Court Situation (Court "Packing" Debate)

[bryan]

First post here. From browsing around, it looks like things are very polarized here, so I'm not sure if an objective debate is possible, but let's try.

Quick Background:

Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia died on Feb 13, 2016 - approximately 9 months before the election. President Obama nominated Merrick Garland on March 16, 2016.

The Republican-led Senate stated that the next president should nominate a judge to fill the vacancy and refused to conduct hearings to allow the nomination to move forward it remained vacant until President Trump's nomination of Neil Gorsuch on Jan 31, 2017.

Ruth Ginsburg died on Sept 18, 2020 - approximately 1.5 months before the election and despite their earlier position (that the next elected president should nominate a nudge to fill an election year Supreme Court vacancy), the Republican-led Senate is on track to confirm Amy Barrett to fill the Ginsburg vacancy.

If successful, Republican-nominated judges would outnumber Democratic-nominated judges by 6-3.

Back to Present

Now there are questions about what Joe Biden should/would do if elected President. Some on the more progressive/left side of the Democratic party think he should expand the court and add more liberal judges. Republicans say that that would be "packing the court" and manipulating the structure/make-up of the court just to give the advantage back to the liberals.

Let's State Our Positions and Debate!

It's easy to take a partisan approach to this and create an argument to suit your desired outcome. But if the argument isn't based on fairness, logic, and reason, it may well just be contrived and weak as a result.

So TRY to take yourself out of the particulars on whether "your side" has the advantage or disadvantage with the current situation, and propose what you think is a fair approach going forward to address (or not-address) the current situation and recent history in the Quick Background section.

I've thought a lot about this, and it bothers me that people can't take their blinders off and debate things respectfully and objectively. So let's see if we can.

My thoughts will follow in the next post.