Why expand the court though? What benefit would it serve by going from 9 seats to 11, 15 or hell 21.
Actually, it does make sense. Packing would help ensure that the high court remain more balanced, which should be how it is in the first place. As we have seen, just a few justices within span of 4 or 8 years having either died off or retired can give a single president too much influence and unjustified influence on such a high court. This should not be allowed, for one president to have such influence. If we had 12 justices or better yet 16, then the chances of a whopping chunk of justices needing replaced within a short timeframe would be greatly reduced.
And, should the democrats retake the government then how about truly balancing the court? We have 6 republican appointed justices already on the court and 3 appointed by democrat presidents, so lets expand the court to 12 and allow only a democratic president to pick the next 3 nominees thus giving the court a true 50/50 balance.
Then, how about also allowing justices appointed by democrat presidents to only be replaced by other democrat presidents. For example, RBG was installed by a democrat president and thus only a democratic president should be allowed to replace RBG. And, no matter how long that might take for a democrat president to come along to do that nominating.
Say Biden loses in 2020 but in 2024 a democrat is elected president, then that democrat president elected in 2024 would be allowed to replace that still vacant seat of RBG and not a second termed Donald Trump. However, should a republican president be elected again in 2024 then that seat vacated by RBG would remain open for even longer until a democrat president came along. And, if we did have 12 justices on the court, it would be less of an issue to hold open a seat for an extended period of time until a democrat president did come along. And the same applies for republican appointed justices, where after the death of Scalia that seat would have remained open until a republican president came along to fill that vacancy.
The downside would be if we had a long stretch of 10 - 20 years where every elected president was of the same party, and thus a vacant court seat would continue to be vacant for 20+ years. Or better yet in that case.... how about a system devised where the house and or senate minority leader(s) of the opposite party from the sitting president would chose the nominee? Where the sitting president of the opposite party thus not qualified to fill that vacancy who was originally appointed by the opposite party. Does that make sense?
Expand the court to 12, allow the next elected democrat president and only a democrat president to fill those 3 vacancy's, thus giving the court a 50/50 balance. And should Biden lose, have Nancy Pelosi and Chuck Schumer get together and nominate the next 3 justices to the court. And if the senate or house or both happen to be in republican control then that republican controlled house and senate would be lawfully bound to go through the process of approving the nominees from the democratic house and senate minority leaders. After all, with the new rules a republican controlled senate would not be allowed to process a justice to replace a dead or retired justice originally appointed from the opposite party, so for Mitch McConnell no more funny business.
In other words, Mitch McConnell and a republican controlled senate would not be allowed to replace a justice appointed by a democrat president, PERIOD. Mitch would be bound to a fair and full senate hearing for whomever the democrat minority leader chose to nominate in replacing that dead or retired democrat appointed justice. Surely I could have said this better.... sorry.