Jurisprudence
Sept 03, 20264:45 PM
Photo illustration by Slate. Photos by Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images and Anna Moneymaker/Getty Images.
Speaker of the House Mike Johnson led an effort Wednesday to amend the Constitution and cap the number of Supreme Court justices at nine. Since the size of the court is currently set by federal law, not by the Constitution, Johnson said the amendment was necessary to stop Democrats from adding justices to the court. Over the course of 24 hours, Johnson announced his plan to introduce the amendment and had it brought to the House floor, only for it to immediately fail along party lines. Despite this defeat, the debate over the court’s structure is just getting started. And Johnson’s “Stop the Count” strategy proves just how much reform is needed.
It doesn’t take a brain surgeon (or even a lawyer) to understand why the leader of the House GOP would like to keep in place a Supreme Court with six Republican appointees. But these kinds of legislative efforts are extremely rare coming from any speaker. Although it was Arizona Rep. Andy Biggs who formally introduced the resolution, Wednesday marked the first time in 30 years that a House speaker has led the charge on proposing a constitutional amendment. What’s more interesting, then, is not the proposal itself, which consisted of only a sentence, but the reason Johnson felt the need to introduce the measure in the first place.
