Michael Hiltzik: Could a new court-packing scheme save the Supreme Court from hard-right domination?
With the prospect looming of a Supreme Court dominated by Trump-appointed right-wing judges into the foreseeable future, an idea for a possible counterstroke has begun percolating among progressive political analysts and legal theorists:
Expand the court from the current nine justices to provide for a more balanced, if not distinctly liberal, bench.
"The idea of expanding the size of the Supreme Court will get traction IF the Democrats take the White House and Congress in 2020," Erwin Chemerinsky, dean of the UC Berkeley law school and a constitutional scholar, told me by email. "It is the only way to keep there from being a very conservative Court for the next 10-20 years."
The members of the conservative bloc on the court are spring chickens, as Supreme Court justices go. Clarence Thomas is 70, Chief Justice John Roberts 63, Samuel Alito 68 and Neil Gorsuch, the first Trump appointee, only 50. It's a safe bet that the replacement
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