Washington, D.C. – Today, U.S. Representative Dusty Johnson (R-S.D.) re-introduced his Keep the Nine constitutional amendment (H.J.Res.8) to limit the number of Justices on the U.S. Supreme Court at nine.
“Recent years have brought more calls to pack the Court or expand the Court,” said Johnson. “This is a terrible idea. As defenders of the Constitution, the Supreme Court’s check on the Executive and Legislative branches is essential to keeping our government free and fair. Turning the Supreme Court into a political football will erode public trust in our institutions and nullify intentions set by our Founding Fathers. Capping the Supreme Court at nine Justices will protect the integrity of the Supreme Court.”
“I applaud Rep. Johnson’s leadership for the nonpartisan “Keep Nine” effort to permanently protect the independence of the Supreme Court from efforts to manipulate the number of Justices for political advantage. Rep. Johnson’s efforts in Congress are a key reason more than 1000 elected officials nationwide have endorsed the commonsense “Keep Nine” Amendment to preserve the current number of nine Justices. Polling shows that an overwhelming majority of voters would support this Amendment. Every elected official who says they oppose Court packing should support this measure to make sure it can never happen,” said Paul Summers and Stephen Rosenthal, Co-Chairs of Keep Nine Coalition, former Attorneys General of Tennessee, Virginia.
“The National Federation of Republican Women, representing 65,000 grass-roots women across the country, strongly supports the Keep Nine Amendment. No Party should be allowed to tip the balance of power to its advantage by increasing the size of the U.S. Supreme Court. Americans have long recognized court-packing as a dangerous manipulation that would undermine confidence in the fairness and impartiality of the Court and upset the essential checks and balances that protect our liberties,” said Eileen Sobjack, President, National Federation of Republican Women.
Johnson’s House Joint Resolution has more than 90 cosponsors and is supported by the Keep Nine Coalition, National Federation of Republican Women, and Association of Mature American Citizens.
Read full bill text for H.J.Res.8 here.
View Johnson’s press conference here.
1. I don’t think the intent of the founding fathers was to cap the supreme court at 9. This is a nice talking point for Dusty when the house is rewarding extremism, and he has a safe seat. However, I think in the general election of 24′ we will see extremism lose, again.
2. If you claim to not want the supreme court to be a political football, change the rules back to 60 votes for approval. This notion that we will never get anything done again on the federal level unless the public provides super majorities to one party is ludicrous. The court was packed with one sided judges by removing the checks and balances (you may have heard about this concept from the founding fathers), how about we find compromises more often and GOVERN. They seem to easily find compromises when it comes to the omnibus, but the rest of the year it is the political theater, and the best part is we are paying for it!
There are a lot of things that the Dems are doing that the founding fathers didn’t intend for them to do. If Republicans don’t stand up and prevent them from doing them, the Dems will keep it up until America become something unrecognizable to the founding fathers. I appreciate Dusty’s taking a stand to stop the Democrats in their tracks!!
This ideology is exactly what I am talking about. Where are the grown ups willing to legislate, compromise, and govern? This isn’t a finger pointing contest, and there is no other situation I can imagine where I would accept the excuse of “its the other person’s fault” or “they aren’t working, so I don’t have to” or “they did it first”, yet there are so many on both sides that find this acceptable. You are giving your money to these people to act like children, and you support it? Not me, if I pay for something, I want it to work.
Fully support. No need to stack the court when one’s feelings get hurt.
Nice job Dusty. Like this.
Dusty is made for Congress. Smart and articulate. Knows how to navigate that mess. I hear he wants to be Governor but we have good and maybe better candidates to do that job. He should stay in the House and then go to the Senate. He’ll be in leadership someday.
You write like Lee Schoenbeck. Do you think Lee Schoenbeck would be a better candidate for governor? What about Marty Jackley?
The problem isn’t the number of Supreme Court Justices.
The problem is nobody wants the other team picking a bunch of justices to pack the court.
I don’t care if there are 9, or 13 (the number of judicial circuits in the Federal system), or 42 (the answer to the ultimate question of life the universe and everything). I care that no SINGLE party and no SINGLE president should be picking all the justices. Doing so is bad for the country no matter WHO does it.
Ideally you need an odd number of justices to prevent ties and a small enough number that it isn’t unwieldy. Because the justices are each assigned to one (or more) Judicial circuits 13 as the number seems to make sense to me.
A proposal I’ve seen that made sense (again, to me).
Expand the court to 13 justices, but make it so that it happens over the next four presidential terms. So whoever is president from 2025-29 picks one new justice. 2029-2033 picks one, and so on. Filling vacancies in the court due to death or retirement happens as normal, but these expanded slots are spread out over the next four presidential terms.
Fix the number of justices that can hear any case to 9. It doesn’t matter how many justices are on the court itself, only 9 justices actually weigh in on any single case. If there are more than 9, for each case, use a random method to determine WHAT justices sit on each case – roll dice, draw lots, deal out cards….it doesn’t matter so long as it’s random.
This would also allow 9 member panels to still hear cases when a justice needs to recuse themselves (due to stock ownership, family connections, etc.), illness, or in the case of the death of a justice, there is a pool of supreme court justices who can jump in.