NEW: “HOW THE LEFT LOST FAITH IN SCOTUS AND LEARNED TO LOVE PACKING THE COURT”

SAN FRANCISCO, CA (October 14, 2022) — Today, a new feature by Pema Levy in Mother Jones takes a deep dive into the growing movement to expand the Supreme Court, and Take Back the Court’s role in helping to bring more supporters into the fold. As the Court has become more and more disconnected from the American public — the people it is meant to serve — and Americans have increasingly lost their faith in the institution, the work to add four new justices to the Court to protect our rights and freedoms has never been more urgent.

“The court is only becoming more radical, only becoming more unhinged,” Lipton-Lubet tells Mother Jones. “The real question is just how long is this going to take until we act? And how many people are going to be hurt in the interim that wouldn’t have had to be if we had acted faster?”

Some highlights from the piece:

“The movement to reform the Supreme Court is gaining momentum and credibility at a rapid pace in large part because of people like Lipton-Lubet—advocates for progressive causes who watched the ascension of Trump- appointed justices to ill-gotten seats on the bench and have now concluded that their life’s work can never be realized if the Supreme Court’s current conservative majority remains in power.”
“Once considered both practically impossible and political suicide, there are now roughly 63 members of Congress who’ve sponsored legislation to expand the court, with several more behind legislation to impose term limits on the justices. [...] On the heels of the high court’s decision to undo abortion rights this summer, advocacy groups focused on reproductive rights, LGBTQ rights, gun control, environmental issues, and climate change have all, for the first time, begun advocating for added justices.”
“To Kang and Lipton-Lubet, the court’s apolitical sheen is a dangerous myth, lulling liberals into complacency. Wipe away this gloss and court expansion becomes the obvious remedy to the court’s rightward lurch: It’s immediate, and it’s indisputably constitutional. Congress changed the size of the court six times before 1870, including three times between 1863 and 1869 in order to keep the court out of the hands of southerners sympathetic to slavery."
“‘If Republicans win control of Congress or the White House, it will be in part because the Supreme Court intentionally and illegitimately helped them do so,’ Lipton-Lubet says, referring to the court’s many election-related rulings. Left unchanged, the court will continue to uproot the legal foundations of modern life, as it also disempowers the party that may one day decide to rein them in.

“‘We’ll do everything we can to educate lawmakers and the public about that reality because the more people understand that the Supreme Court is little more than the legal department of the Republican National Committee, the more clear the need for reform will be.'”

Read the full story here: https://www.motherjones.com/politics/2022/10/how-the-left-lost-faith-in-scotus-and-learned-to-love-packing-the-court/