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Speaker 1: Welcome to the Bloomberg Law Podcast. I'm June Grosso. Every

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Speaker 1: day we bring you insight and analysis into the most

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Speaker 1: important legal news of the day. You can find more

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Speaker 1: episodes of the Bloomberg Law Podcast on Apple Podcasts, SoundCloud

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Speaker 1: and on Bloomberg dot com. Slash Podcasts and Old unconventional

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Speaker 1: ideas becoming new again. Court packing or expanding the number

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Speaker 1: of justices on the Supreme Court. Democrats say the court

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Speaker 1: is becoming politicized and they are increasingly looking to court

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Speaker 1: packing as a solution. Joining me is Howard Crant, dean

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Speaker 1: of the Chicago Kent College of Law and author of

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Speaker 1: the book Presidential Powers. How Are It? Describe how court

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Speaker 1: packing would work? Well, there are actually an array of

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Speaker 1: possibilities and proposals floating out there. But the court packing

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Speaker 1: itself would be the ability of the new administration, presumably

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Speaker 1: a democratic one, to add the number of justices on

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Speaker 1: the Supreme Court. We currently have nine. If they added,

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Speaker 1: say to twelve or fifteen, that would increase the chances

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Speaker 1: of a solid democratic majority on the court. How would

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Speaker 1: they accomplish that? What would have to be done? Uh

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Speaker 1: Congress would have to pass a law. It's clear that

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Speaker 1: Congress has the power to alter the number of justices

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Speaker 1: on the Supreme Court. It has done so from six

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Speaker 1: to seven to ten back to nine over the years,

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Speaker 1: uh not having changed the number of justices since eight

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Speaker 1: sixty nine. But there's a conventional consensus that Congress has

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Speaker 1: the power, and that's what FDR proposed many many years

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Speaker 1: ago in the wake of the New Deal. Now, Senate

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Speaker 1: Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, as we've discussed, changed the rules

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Speaker 1: when he got rid of the sixty vote threshold for

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Speaker 1: the Supreme Court nominees and also refused to replace Justice

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Speaker 1: Schuley until a Republican was elected president. Do you see

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Speaker 1: court packing as a response in kind, so to speak?

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Speaker 1: You know, it is. I think that it's are to

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Speaker 1: tell how much is political posturing now for the campaign

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Speaker 1: and how much this is candidates are trying to see

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Speaker 1: if this resonates on the trail, and how much this

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Speaker 1: is serious policy. I think there are other proposals out

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Speaker 1: there are better from the policy perspective, term limits for justices,

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Speaker 1: for instance, or a rotation among Appellate justices, judges and

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Speaker 1: the Supreme Court justices. I mean, those are I think

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Speaker 1: are probably long term proposals that are sounder in terms

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Speaker 1: of their foundation. But you know the question is whether

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Speaker 1: those will again have some kind of resonance on the

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Speaker 1: campaign trail. Would it be less difficult to institute term

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Speaker 1: limits for Supreme Court justices or just as difficult. So

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Speaker 1: term limits may or may not require a constitutional amendment,

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Speaker 1: so that may create a superabowl obstacle. But I think

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Speaker 1: there are ways to do term limits. For instance, just

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Speaker 1: pledging that each justice appointed would agree to step down

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Speaker 1: after eighteen years. That's one suggestion that would be good.

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Speaker 1: I think a rotation is possible whereby Congress could say

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Speaker 1: that uh judges, judges would be chosen by lot to

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Speaker 1: serve a term in the Supreme Court, And that'd be

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Speaker 1: an interesting way to sort of unify the pellet court

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Speaker 1: level as well as the Supreme Court level. Um. So

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Speaker 1: there are everybody's piercing through proposals to see what's politically feasible,

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Speaker 1: what's constitutionally feasible, and what's actually best for the country.

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Speaker 1: And I personally think that packing just would create a

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Speaker 1: kind of you know, arms race from the Republicans Democrats

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Speaker 1: every time they come in power. They'd add to the

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Speaker 1: Supreme Court and I don't think that's going to do

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Speaker 1: the country much good. Do you feel that it would

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Speaker 1: be that the court has become too political in recent years?

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Speaker 1: There's no question that there's greater partisanship on the Supreme

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Speaker 1: Court as there is in Congress in general, and I

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Speaker 1: think the proposals are have the objective of lessening that partisanship.

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Speaker 1: There's even one we haven't mentioned now, which would would

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Speaker 1: take a Supreme Court amendment which would have five Democratic

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Speaker 1: appointees and five Republican appointees, and then they would in

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Speaker 1: turn pick five neutral appointees to be on the court,

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Speaker 1: sort of like you do sometimes in a arbitration panel. Um.

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Speaker 1: I think that's far fetched, but nonetheless it get gave

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Speaker 1: aims at the idea that you've just articulated, which is

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Speaker 1: we want to calm down this partisanship. I happen to

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Speaker 1: think that the term limits would be a great way

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Speaker 1: to do that as well, because everybody would know that

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Speaker 1: you can't have a justice on there for thirty years,

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Speaker 1: and I think that's healthy. All right, Thank you so much, Harold.

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Speaker 1: That's Harold Cranti's dean at the Chicago Kent College of Law.

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Speaker 1: Thanks for listening. To the Bloomberg Law podcast. You can

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Speaker 1: subscribe and listen to the show on Apple Podcasts, SoundCloud,

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Speaker 1: and on bloomberg dot com slash podcast. I'm June Brosso.

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Speaker 1: This is Bloomberg Ye.