Democrats have a better option than court packing

The easiest way to defeat right-wing judicial tyranny is to ignore it

A gavel.
(Image credit: Illustrated | iStock)

With the unfortunate death of Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsberg, Republicans are licking their chops at the prospect of a 6-3 conservative supermajority on the nation's highest legal body. This would be an obvious violation of the "principle" Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell announced in 2016 to prevent Democrats from filling Antonin Scalia's seat after he died, but McConnell was lying then just as he's lying now about the supposed distinction.

One potential nominee is Amy Coney Barrett, a hard-line social conservative who has suggested that paper money, West Virginia, the Fourteenth Amendment, and the Social Security Administration are all possibly unconstitutional. While Chief Justice John Roberts has shown some political discretion in his rulings to date, should another right-wing extremist like Barrett be confirmed, he will no longer be the swing vote on the court. It seems quite likely that Roe v. Wade and the Affordable Care Act will be struck down, if not basic building blocks of the American state, and future Democratic presidents will find nearly everything they do overturned automatically under the noble legal principle of "if Democrats do it, it is unconstitutional."

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Ryan Cooper

Ryan Cooper is a national correspondent at TheWeek.com. His work has appeared in the Washington Monthly, The New Republic, and the Washington Post.