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LAW | JUSTICE

The Worst Argument Against Expanding SCOTUS

I’m sure it will be familiar.

For the past 83 years, the Supreme Court’s landmark decisions have usually been consistent with American public opinion. For liberals, recent exceptions to that rule have included Bush v. Gore, DC v. Heller, and Citizens United v. FEC. Conservatives have likewise decried Roe v. Wade, NFIB v. Sebelius, and Obergefell v. Hodges. But generally speaking, for the past eight decades, the Court’s excursions into political controversies have not produced a no-holds-barred constitutional crisis.

Nevertheless, such crises have occurred in our history, and Roberts’s new 6-3 majority is poised to race us to the precipice of another reckoning with the American tradition of judicial supremacy.

The Misleading FDR Story

The last time a right-wing Supreme Court majority stood directly in the path of the public will was during President Franklin D. Roosevelt’s first term.