Mike Johnson's panic cannot save a stolen Supreme Court
By Sophie Naimi · Reporting from Paris ·
When a man who ascended to the Speaker’s gavel by accident suddenly scrambles to freeze the laws of physics, pay attention to what he is terrified of losing.
# The Panic of a Party That Knows Its Monopoly Is Built on Sand
When a man who ascended to the Speaker’s gavel by accident scrambles to freeze the laws of physics, pay attention to what he fears losing. House Speaker Mike Johnson led an effort alongside Arizona Representative Andy Biggs to amend the Constitution and permanently cap the Supreme Court at nine justices, as Slate reported. It failed 212 to 206 along party lines, but the desperation behind it was deafening. This is a preemptive protection racket.
We have watched this movie before, much like the desperate institutional maneuvering of the Judicial Procedures Reform Bill of 1937, when a beleaguered executive tried to bend a hostile bench to democratic will. The historical pattern predicts this exact form of panic whenever a minority faction realizes its minority rule is slipping. As the Judiciary Act of 1869 demonstrated long ago, the size of our highest bench has never been a sacred mathematical constant; it is a political instrument that has shifted half a dozen times to reflect the nation. Yet today, conservative operators want to lock the doors from the inside. They look at a six-to-three conservative majority—a radicalized bloc friendly to corporate power and executive impunity—and they recognize that their entire project depends on keeping that lock rusted shut.
Fear of Democracy
Let us not pretend the right lacks an argument. The strongest opposing case rests on the sanctity of institutional stability. Conservative legal theorists argue that tampering with the number of justices opens a Pandora's box of endless tit-for-tat retaliation, destroying whatever civic myth remains that the court is an apolitical referee above the fray. If Democrats add four seats today, the argument goes, Republicans will add ten tomorrow, until the Supreme Court resembles a football stadium rather than a bench of jurists.
It is a serious argument, and it would carry moral weight if the institution had not already squandered its legitimacy from within. Josh Orton noted in NBC News that the public now views the Roberts majority as deeply compromised and antidemocratic. You cannot preserve an umpire's neutrality when the umpire is actively rewriting settled rights, shielding insurrectionists, and taking vacations courtesy of billionaires. The fear of court packing is invoked by the very people who already packed the court through stolen appointments and expedited confirmations. To demand adherence to procedural purity now is like locking the fire exits after you have already set the theater ablaze.
Fixing the High Court
This brings us to the core of what is broken. As ms.now detailed through the insights of Representative James Clyburn, the conversation in democratic politics has shifted from whether to reform the high court to how to do it. Former Vice President Kamala Harris has openly advocated for expanding the court to 13 justices, mirroring Clyburn's call for a baker's dozen.
House Republicans will continue to introduce symbolic constitutional amendments regarding judicial structure to force vulnerable Democrats into difficult votes ahead of upcoming congressional midterms, clinging to a system that privileges minority vetoes over human needs. But make no mistake: Democratic leadership, including Minority Whip Katherine Clark, who slammed Johnson’s maneuver as an attempt to strip power from the American people, must make Supreme Court expansion a central, unyielding plank of their platform. Legislative gridlock will persist as long as Congress remains divided, pushing this fight squarely into the presidential election cycles to come. We do not need a constitutional straightjacket designed by Mike Johnson to protect a captured bench. We need the courage to break the monopoly, expand the court to 13 seats, and rescue our democracy from the runaway robe.