Fascinating argument from poli-sci prof Jeffrey H. Anderson over at The Weekly Standard, Eight is Enough (for Now). For those of us who oppose judicial activism, an even-numbered court that could stand athwart judicially imposed wheels of "progress" would be quite a welcome innovation.
Indeed, it would be a return to the original historical precedent!
To hear some tell it, the Supreme Court would be hamstrung if it had to function for a year or more without a ninth justice. What to do in the event of a 4-4 tie? This would not have been viewed as a problem, however, by America's Founders, who created a Court with an even number of justices—six. In fact, Marbury v. Madison, arguably the most important case in the Court's 226-year history, was decided by a six-justice Court.
The Constitution, of course, leaves it up to Congress to decide how many justices will serve on the Supreme Court. In 1789, Congress passed, and President Washington signed, the Judiciary Act. That law determined that the number of Supreme Court justices should be six. The Congress of that day was full of men who had been at Independence Hall two years earlier and had participated in the writing of the Constitution, so they presumably knew what they were doing.
With a six-justice Court, a 3-3 opinion simply meant the Court wouldn't overturn a lower federal court ruling but instead would let it stand (or wouldn't alter the status quo in a case taken up by the Court as a matter of original jurisdiction). One effect of a six-person Court was that it took two-thirds of the Court (4 votes to 2) to declare unconstitutional a law duly passed by Congress or a state legislature. With a nine-person Court, 5-4 rulings are commonplace: In modern times, the trajectory of the nation has changed repeatedly on the personal whims of an Anthony Kennedy or a Sandra Day O'Connor. An even-numbered Court seems to be more conducive to judicial restraint...
[T]he truth is that the Court worked far better in 1790 or 1806 than it did in 1973 or 2015. Judicial review is meant only to void acts that violate, as Alexander Hamilton put it, the "manifest tenor" (obvious meaning) of the Constitution. Justices are supposed to adhere to the clear-violation standard, which holds that an act must be unconstitutional beyond a reasonable doubt for the Court to be justified in voiding it. Justice Antonin Scalia adhered to the clear-violation standard of constitutional review.
Returning to an even number of justices, if only for a year, would offer an additional level of protection against those justices who are inclined to eschew the clear-violation standard and impose their own wills. With an even number of justices, overturning the actions of the other, more representative branches of government would require at least a two-vote margin.
Not only will the Court survive just fine with an even number of justices for the next year or so, it may even do the Court some good.
1 comment:
I continue to think Congress commits political malpractice each day it fails to reform the Supreme Court, whether by limiting its jurisdiction, increasing the number of justices, putting them on rotation, or a combination of these or other reforms – where the practice of judging has become no longer restrained from lawmaking, the only thing left is to control who may practice it. And while we're at it, a Congressional declaration repudiating the judicial supremacy announced in Cooper v. Aaron – a constitutional republic is not possible when the Court holds its own constitutional convention every term.
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