https://www.nationalreview.com/magazine/2019/06/24/against-the-democrats-court-packing-scheme/
A terrible idea is getting new support
No bad idea is ever truly dead. The latest to rise from the crypt is Court-packing: expanding the size of the Supreme Court to pack it with justices who can outvote the current majority. Progressive activist groups — including one, bluntly titled “Pack the Court,” that boasts it will spend millions in 2020 — have formed to push the idea. Prominently on board are Hillary Clinton’s former press secretary and Harvard law professors Laurence Tribe and Mark Tushnet. Democratic presidential contenders noticed. Pete Buttigieg first attracted national attention when he pushed Court-packing, and he has since rolled out a complex plan, to create a 15-member Supreme Court, that NBC News described as “front-and-center of his campaign.” Several rivals followed suit, including Kamala Harris, Elizabeth Warren, Beto O’Rourke, and Kirsten Gillibrand.
Court-packing is a Rubicon we should dread to cross. It last appeared on the national agenda in 1937, the high-water mark of one-party federal government at home and ideological authoritarianism around the globe. Even then, it was roundly rejected by the American body politic. In one swoop, it would irreparably destroy the American tradition of judicial independence of the political branches. In short order, this would end the American experiment of the rule of law and a government of separated and limited powers.
The Supreme Court has always been political in various ways, but at a remove from direct control by politicians. Life tenure, rare vacancies, justices long outlasting the elected terms of the people who appoint them — these things sustain the Court as a separate branch. Allowing the Court to be swamped with new appointees whenever the president wants new precedents is something we recognize as a banana-republic tactic when we see it in other countries. Our own system, strong and durable as it has proven, is not immune. Court-packing would set off an unstoppable dynamic of reciprocal escalations. Even Bernie Sanders has criticized the proposal on the grounds that Republicans would retaliate in kind and the Court would be destroyed in the process. We’ve had cries of wolf before about threats to judicial independence and the rule of law. But to quote Justice Scalia, this wolf comes as a wolf.