Normally, I offer a witty anecdote to lure my readers in to care about what I’m writing about. It normally works. Today, I just want to get into the dirty topic of packing the court. This is a concept where one party rams in a bunch of judges “on their team”, a process that ultimately happens when every new president comes into power. Did RBG’s seat get stolen from the Democrats? That’s a loaded question, isn’t it? Now, should they have rushed through a vote as an election was going on when they wouldn’t for President Obama, just because it was “their team”? The answer is absolutely not. Any reasonable person would see that as a hypocritical power grab. But, I would also argue that the Supreme Court is supposed to be the one governmental body that isn’t supposed to have any other side than the Constitution.

So, this topic of now that President Biden is in office we should magically create new seats to pack the court is insane to me. Why? Because if the roles were reversed, the Democrats would be crying at how this is a power grab from the Republicans. Then the other party comes into office, does the same thing, and we are now in a loop of just adding more judges so until we have 1000 Supreme Court justices. Doesn’t anyone else see how ridiculous it is and how both parties should be against this? Packing the courts isn’t the problem; the problem is the lifetime appointments.

There should be term limits for a justice. Maybe they can only serve for 10-20 years. Maybe they only serve 8. There would be no need to pack a court if there is no lifetime appointment. They do their job for a limited amount of time, then fresh perspective and insight gets added in after the term. That’s a logical approach. That’s a reasonable answer to this problem. Times are always changing, so why have a 90 year old judge that can barely think straight make these important decisions that directly impact our lives? Imagine, just imagine, if we truly get impartial judges to serve for their term, and then we just get a new one to replace them. This can be staggered so that there are some veterans on the bench. But, why not avoid the major problems we have no by implementing some type of term limit. (I’m also 100% on the side of having term limits for every politician, in case you’re wondering.)

I’m a big fan of common sense. And court packing isn’t common sense. The logical approach is not to add more judges to the problem, but to fix the underlying cause of the problem: lifetime appointments. That is the wave of the future.