1/ Unacceptable. "I'll tell you my position on packing the Supreme Court the day after the election." Nope. Jurists from Charles Evans Hughes to Ruth Bader Ginsburg have warned that court packing imperils the independence of the judiciary. They're right. This is a big deal. https://twitter.com/abigailmarone/status/1314294951115722754

2/ Courts have often erred, letting ideology intrude into their decisions. Judges have violated the Constitution by usurping the authority of other branches of government under the guise of enforcing constitutional principles. Courts have claimed powers not rightfully theirs.

3/ Lincoln was right to reject judicial supremacy. He was on solid ground in standing up to the judicial usurpation of authority in the Dred Scott case. But Roosevelt was wrong to propose packing the Court. And the people who have today revived his misbegotten idea are wrong too.

4/ For all their historical errors and faults, courts are nevertheless indispensable institutions in our constitutional system, and the independence of the judiciary is a sacrosanct principle. It is not that the number 9 is sacred or constitutionally required. It isn't. But ....

5/ If the number of justices on the Court is to be increased (or decreased) that decision must not be motivated and shaped by ideological goals. Even Roosevelt understood that well enough to realize he had to lie about the real purposes of his court-packing plan. The plan failed.

6/ The reason that Roosevelt's court-packing plan failed is that everyone--Democrats as well as Republicans--knew that his ostensible purposes were a mask for ideological goals. People perceived the threat court-packing posed to the independence of the judiciary and stopped it.

7/ Judicial nominations & confirmations have become far more politicized and contentious than they should be in large part because courts have become more powerful than they were meant to be in our constitutional system. Thus we have a constant struggle for control of the courts.

8/ Judicial overreaching and usurpations helped create a situation in which control of the courts has become a key objective for ideological partisans on the competing sides. If judicial indpendence is, in the end, compromised, which I pray it will not be, judges share the blame.