Pete Buttigieg has put a once-fringe idea back in the center of the Democratic conversation: expanding the Supreme Court. His basic claim is blunt. The Court has become, in his words, a “nakedly partisan institution.” And his proposed cure is not subtle either: add six seats to the current nine.
That move has a cleaner name in our political vocabulary than in our civics textbooks: court-packing. The Constitution does not use that term. It does not forbid the strategy, either. Which is exactly why the argument matters. This is one of those moments when legality and wisdom split apart, and the Republic has to choose which one it wants to live by.
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What he proposed
During a Sunday appearance on Meet the Press, Buttigieg argued that Democrats should expand the Court because it has become dangerously political. “It has become a nakedly partisan institution,” he said. “And I want to be clear,” he added, “The idea is not to just add justices for its own sake. The idea is to reform the institution, to make it less partisan.”
The headline is the number: six additional justices, turning nine into fifteen. It is also a bigger expansion than he had floated before. Earlier this year, he discussed a package that included term limits and a “balanced bench” selection process and said he favored expanding the Court from nine to 13, tying that number to what he called “the number of districts” in the federal system. Critics later noted that the federal judiciary has 94 judicial districts and that 13 corresponds to the appellate circuits, not districts.
His newer figure, six additional seats, aligns with an academic proposal associated with law professors Daniel Epps and Ganesh Sitaraman, which envisions an even partisan split with a final bloc selected by consensus.
Can Congress do it?
Yes. The Constitution establishes “one supreme Court” but does not lock in how many seats it has. The size of the Court has been changed by Congress through ordinary legislation at different points in U.S. history.
So the constitutional question is not whether Congress may change the number. It is why it is changing the number and what that precedent teaches future Congresses to do the next time the Court gets in the way.
The partisan premise
Buttigieg’s criticism taps into something many Americans recognize: the Court looks political. Confirmation battles have trained the public to treat justices like permanent party trophies. And when decisions line up with predictable ideological coalitions, it can feel less like law and more like power.
But this is where a reform argument can turn into a civic trap. Buttigieg’s stated intent is institutional, not partisan. He says the point is to make the Court less partisan. The skeptic’s worry is about incentives: once we accept that the Court is “just politics,” the next step is to fix it with more politics. Add seats. Call it “reform.” Then the other side does the same thing the next time it wins.
That move does not end a legitimacy fight. It relocates it. The question stops being “Did the Court interpret the Constitution?” and becomes “Do we have the votes to rebuild the Court?” In other words, constitutional meaning starts to look like a prize awarded to whoever controls the next Congress and the next president.
Checks and balances
In a healthy separation of powers, the Court is supposed to be the branch that can say “no” when the political branches sprint past constitutional limits. It is not meant to be popular. It is meant to be stubborn.
Court expansion changes that relationship in at least three ways:
- It weakens judicial independence. If the Court’s size becomes a reward-and-punishment lever, justices are no longer insulated from retaliation. The message becomes: rule against us, and we will restructure you.
- It supercharges the presidency. A president backed by a compliant Congress could reshape constitutional doctrine quickly by appointing a wave of new justices. That concentrates power in the political branches, the very branches the Court is supposed to restrain.
- It invites escalation. If fifteen is legitimate today, why not seventeen tomorrow? Or twenty-one? The end state is obvious: a Court that expands and contracts based on election cycles, and a Constitution that shrinks with it.
Checks and balances only work when each branch accepts limits even when it has the power to ignore them. Court-packing tests whether we still believe in that kind of self-restraint.
The hard question
If the Court is too partisan, what exactly is the diagnosis?
- Is the problem the justices, meaning their motives are corrupt?
- Is it the appointment process, meaning confirmation has become a proxy war?
- Is it the constitutional structure, meaning life tenure and staggered vacancies are producing lopsided outcomes?
- Or is it the public expectation, meaning we have taught citizens to view courts as legislatures in robes?
Those are different problems, and they call for different remedies. Term limits and “balanced bench” ideas land differently than adding seats. Packing is the most aggressive tool because it directly weaponizes structure to change outcomes, even if the stated aim is to reduce partisanship.
And that leads to the question I would have asked my civics students, the one that never sounds partisan until it becomes personal: if your opponents controlled Congress and the White House next year, would you still want them to have this tool?
Bottom line
Buttigieg’s core argument is that public confidence in the Court has fallen and that the institution now looks “nakedly partisan.” From there, he says expansion is a form of reform, not expansion for its own sake.
The Constitution permits Congress to change the Court’s size. That is not the end of the inquiry. In a system built on checks and balances, the deeper question is whether we can keep a branch that is able to disappoint both parties without being remodeled each time it does.