Congressional Democrats will introduce legislation on Thursday to add an additional four justices to the Supreme Court, increasing the total from nine to thirteen, Democrat Rep. Mondaire Jones announced on Twitter Wednesday night.
“Our democracy is under assault, and the Supreme Court has dealt the sharpest blows. To restore power to the people, we must #ExpandTheCourt,” Jones wrote, as he announced his plan to introduce legislation that would undermine our democracy.
Jones continued, writing that he would be joined by Rep. Jerry Nadler (D-NY), Rep. Hank Johnson (D-GA), and Sen. Ed Markey (D-MA).
Our democracy is under assault, and the Supreme Court has dealt the sharpest blows.
To restore power to the people, we must #ExpandTheCourt.
That's why I'm introducing the Judiciary Act of 2021 with @RepJerryNadler, @RepHankJohnson, and @SenMarkey to add four seats to SCOTUS. https://t.co/iW0hlmIpwk
— Rep. Mondaire Jones (@RepMondaire) April 15, 2021
Before her death, Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg told NPR how she adamantly opposed adding justices to the Supreme Court, saying, “Nine seems to be a good number… I think it was a bad idea when President Franklin Roosevelt tried to pack the court.”
“If anything would make the court look partisan,” she later added. “it would be that — one side saying, ‘When we’re in power, we’re going to enlarge the number of judges, so we would have more people who would vote the way we want them to.’”
As the Democrat-controlled Senate Judiciary Committee wrote in 1937, packing the Supreme Court “is a measure which should be so emphatically rejected that its parallel will never again be presented to the free representatives of the free people of America.”
They wrote that the theory of court packing is “in direct violation of the spirit of the American Constitution and its employment would permit alteration of the Constitution without the people’s consent or approval; it undermines the protection our constitution system gives to minorities and is subversive of the rights of individuals.”
