Why bother with a thousand cuts when you can just pack the court and do it with one, as was accomplished today when the court effectively struck down the voting rights act?

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trollbridge 4 hours ago | parent [-]

Nitpick: the court isn’t “packed”; it’s has 9 members since 1869.

The VRA wasn’t struck down either. The court just ruled that race based gerrymandering isn’t legal if it results in partisan advantage in such a district.

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nullocator 4 hours ago | parent | next [-]

That's a funny way of saying they ruled that race-base gerrymandering is legal in effectively all circumstances.

The supreme court's ruling is basically: "Racial gerrymandering is insulated from legal recourse as long as it's packaged as partisan mapmaking"

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mullingitover 4 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

> Nitpick: the court isn’t “packed”; it’s has 9 members since 1869.

I'm sorry but this is an unserious, bad faith nitpick. The court is absolutely packed by carefully manipulating the membership. The confirmation process for most of my lifetime has been an intensely partisan operation to ensure only the most hardened political operatives land on the court, with the intention of turning it into the 'super legislature' that it is. This argument does a disservice to the people who worked so hard to pack it.

> The VRA wasn’t struck down either

I mean, that's your opinion. but you're not on the SC and someone who is says that this decision's effect is to "eviscerate the law."

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sidewndr46 4 hours ago | parent [-]

packing SCOTUS has always referred to attempts to add justices, which is what was attempted by FDR

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mullingitover 4 hours ago | parent [-]

Incorrect.[1]

[1] https://www.rutgers.edu/news/what-court-packing

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arikrahman 3 hours ago | parent | next [-]

Thanks for giving the citation based on reality and keeping it calm and rational in contrast.

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sidewndr46 4 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

You're welcome to cite whatever modern piece that rewrites to whatever definitions you like. I actively encourage you to stick your head in the sand and scream at the top of your lungs.

The literal public education textbook I was required to learn from explained court packing decades ago as increasing the number of justices to imbalance an existing court, which is explicitly what FDR was trying to do. If the English language has changed that much in my short lifetime, I'm pretty sure I grew up on mars.

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mullingitover 3 hours ago | parent [-]

You don't need to be upset, the mature thing to do is to retract your claim about it having 'always' referred to increasing the court size. That's just facially incorrect, as I demonstrated. Furthermore, what does your 'well ackshually' in this situation do to address the obvious problem of a dysfunctional branch of government suffering from capture by partisans? Let's not pretend that you'd be okay with this if the court was packed with card-carrying democratic socialists.

	▲	superxpro12 3 hours ago \| parent [-]
		Pedantry is serving nobody any good here. It distracts from the core debate which is far more serious than the evolution of a dictionary word. It meant one thing. Now it means more. Let's move on and stay on topic.