“ The refusal to see that fact has always been the manifest contradiction at the heart of liberal court-packing fantasies, which imagine that you could destroy the legitimacy of an institution and then still use it to reshape the law and society for their own ideological purposes.”
I think this is a misreading of what liberals want out of…
“ The refusal to see that fact has always been the manifest contradiction at the heart of liberal court-packing fantasies, which imagine that you could destroy the legitimacy of an institution and then still use it to reshape the law and society for their own ideological purposes.”
I think this is a misreading of what liberals want out of court packing. They don’t want to use the court to reshape society for their purposes (what would that even look like? You can’t create a single payer system or build green energy infrastructure with the judicial branch.) They just (correctly) think that their policy goals are significantly more likely to be achieved with a court that has lost its legitimacy and switches back and forth between leaning left and leaning right, than a court that will have a significant rightward lean for the foreseeable future.
I am aware that there are liberals who think destroying the courts would be a good thing, and I've read principled liberal defenses of popular constitutionalism that are less radical than "destroy the courts." But I've rarely if ever met someone who holds those views in person. By contrast, I've had lots of conversations with IRL liberals who have favored packing the court to protect abortion rights, voting rights, affirmative action, gay and trans rights, the rights of felons and undocumented immigrants, etc. They assume, in other words, that the courts will still be respected when they overturn democratically-passed laws and executive decisions that liberals disapprove of even if liberals packed the court in response to rulings *they* disapproved of.
I don't think that's a remotely plausible stance to take. But I've met lots of people who take it, even if they don't fully understand that that's what they're saying.
“ The refusal to see that fact has always been the manifest contradiction at the heart of liberal court-packing fantasies, which imagine that you could destroy the legitimacy of an institution and then still use it to reshape the law and society for their own ideological purposes.”
I think this is a misreading of what liberals want out of court packing. They don’t want to use the court to reshape society for their purposes (what would that even look like? You can’t create a single payer system or build green energy infrastructure with the judicial branch.) They just (correctly) think that their policy goals are significantly more likely to be achieved with a court that has lost its legitimacy and switches back and forth between leaning left and leaning right, than a court that will have a significant rightward lean for the foreseeable future.
I am aware that there are liberals who think destroying the courts would be a good thing, and I've read principled liberal defenses of popular constitutionalism that are less radical than "destroy the courts." But I've rarely if ever met someone who holds those views in person. By contrast, I've had lots of conversations with IRL liberals who have favored packing the court to protect abortion rights, voting rights, affirmative action, gay and trans rights, the rights of felons and undocumented immigrants, etc. They assume, in other words, that the courts will still be respected when they overturn democratically-passed laws and executive decisions that liberals disapprove of even if liberals packed the court in response to rulings *they* disapproved of.
I don't think that's a remotely plausible stance to take. But I've met lots of people who take it, even if they don't fully understand that that's what they're saying.
Interesting no one you know who wants to pack the court also wants weaker judicial review. That is my position and I am not alone.