U.S. Supreme Court Justice Sonia Sotomayor said Monday she feels daily “frustration” as conservative justices move the country to the ideological right.
In an appearance at the University of California, Berkely School of Law, Sotomayor was asked how she copes with the consistently conservative rulings from the court.
“Every loss truly traumatizes me,” but “I get up the next morning,” she said in response to the question, The San Francisco Chronicle reported. The crowd — about 1,300 students — applauded.
In her remarks, she criticized her “originalist colleagues” whom she said have come up with “new ways to interpret the Constitution,” changing rulings “that some of us believed were well established,” the Chronicle reported.
The 6-3 conservative court has had an eventful couple of terms, making its mark on some of the most consequential aspects of everyday life — from overturning the federal right to an abortion to ruling affirmative action in colleges unconstitutional.
It doesn’t, but an act to change the size of the court would have to go through the House and Senate and we don’t have the votes in either body for that right now.
Fun fact, the last time we changed the court size was to SHRINK it from 10 to 7 in order to deny President Johnson (no, the other one) a Supreme court pick.
After he got bounced and replaced by Grant, they increased it back to 9 where it has been ever since.
I wouldn’t be averse to something similar, shrink the court from 9 to 5, elimimate the 4 most recently added justices. Yeah, we’d lose Brown-Jackson, but that’s a small price to pay to get rid of Trump’s nominees.
The court would then split 2 conservative, 2 liberal with Roberts as the swing vote.
IIRC, most legal scholars believe that shrinking the court doesn’t get rid of existing justices as they are appointed for life. It simply prevents the appointment of new ones.
Seal Team Six and presidential immunity can take care of that.
So appoint new legal scholars while you’re at it.