Holder: Democrats Should Add Seats to SCOTUS – Do You Agree?

What’s the story?

• Former Attorney General Eric Holder said Democrats should consider adding two additional justices to the Supreme Court to counter Republicans’ “power grabbing antics.”
• Holder told a crowd at Yale Law School that if he were president, he’d “seriously consider adding two seats to the Supreme Court to make up for [Senate Majority Leader] Mitch McConnell‘s power-grabbing antics.”
• Holder was referring to McConnell’s refusal to allow a vote on Judge Merrick Garland after President Barack Obama nominated him to SCOTUS in March 2016. The seat was eventually filled by President Donald Trump’s pick, Neil Gorsuch.
• “Given the Merrick Garland situation, the question of legitimacy is one that I think we should talk about,” Holder said. “We should be talking even about expanding the number of people who serve on the Supreme Court, if there is a Democratic president and a Congress that would do that.”
• The Constitution does not mandate that the Supreme Court have nine justices—Congress could increase that number to 11, 15, or 27.
• Pack the Courts, an advocacy organization that aims to just that, tweeted out in support of Holder’s comments:

What are both sides saying?

• Holder’s spokesperson confirmed the comments in a statement to Law & Crime, which first reported on the story.

“In response to a question, former Attorney General Holder said that given the unfairness, unprecedented obstruction, and disregard of historical precedent by Mitch McConnell and Senate Republicans, when Democrats retake the majority they should consider expanding the Supreme Court to restore adherence to previously accepted norms for judicial nominations,” spokesperson Patrick Rodenbush said. “He views this as a corrective.”

• During Justice Brett Kavanaugh’s swearing-in ceremony, McConnell said talk of court-packing reflected liberal extremism.

“Some left-wing publications are already trying to lay the groundwork for, you guessed it, literally packing the court with more justices,” McConnell said. “That’s right, the far left has gone scrounging through the ash-heap of American history and they’re bandying about that discredited fantasy from the 1930s.”

• Chief Justice John Roberts, who was appointed by President George W. Bush, pushed back against any intimation of conservative or liberal judges, issuing a rare public statement:

“We do not have Obama judges or Trump judges, Bush judges or Clinton judges,” Roberts said last November. “What we have is an extraordinary group of dedicated judges doing their level best to do equal right to those appearing before them.”

What do you think?

Should Democrats consider court packing? Should both parties consider a gradual phase-in of additional justices? Hit Take Action and tell your reps, then share your thoughts below.

—Josh Herman

(Photo Credit: Fred Schilling / Collection of the Supreme Court of the United States)