The Supreme Court Needs A Breather : Law Professor Calls For Replacement of Supreme Court With A Specialized Court For Constitutional Questions JONATHAN TURLEY
We have been discussing calls to pack the Supreme Court and President-Elect Joe Biden pledging to assemble a commission of experts to fundamentally change the Supreme Court after it added another conservative justice to the majority. Boston College Law Professor Kent Greenfield is already putting forward one such proposal: just replace the Supreme Court on constitutional questions. Greenfield calls for the establishment of a constitutional court that would strip the Supreme Court of the ability to rule on such question because the Supreme Court needs a breather. That breath however only became a perceived need for many academics when the conservative conservative on the Court grew to 6-3.
In an op-ed for the New York Times, Professor Kent Greenfield argued that the Supreme Court has become too partisan and unbalanced to trust it with deciding the most important issues of our day. Of course, the Court reached that line of partisanship when a solid conservative majority emerged. It was entirely trustworthy when liberals held a majority in prior years or a functional majority existed with justices like Souter and O Conner on critical issues. Many Americans (roughly half) and judges support the conservative approach of the Court s majority. However, Democrats have declared that a majority of justices with conservative jurisprudential views is now grounds for stripping the court of cases or jurisdiction or even pack the court with a liberal majority.
Greenfield calls this court stripping plan a reboot. He would allow the Supreme Court to continue to interpret statutes but bar it from ruling on constitutional issues. Instead, he would create a new court with a new majority for constitutional cases.
A great reboot to go with the great reset.