Deseret News
Public confidence in institutions is already low. Adding justices to the Supreme Court would make it worse
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Photo Illustration by Michelle Budge and Alex Cochran
The debate over enlarging the U.S. Supreme Court would be largely unnecessary if Congress would take its power to legislate seriously.
Even so, history has plenty to offer on the subject, clearly demonstrating that court size has been used as a political weapon before. No one should doubt that, once unsheathed again after lying dormant for 152 years, it would be weaponized again.
The nation’s high court has, in recent decades, become pivotal in battles over culture-war issues. That includes cases involving limits on abortion rights, such as a recent one striking down a Louisiana state law that imposed hospital-admission requirements on abortion clinic doctors. And in the Hobby Lobby case that exempted private corporations from regulations its owners objected to on religious grounds. And in Masterpiece Cakeshop vs. Colorado, which ruled in favor of a baker who refused to make a cake for a transgender woman, to cite just three examples.