Pete Buttigieg: ‘I Don’t Know’ If My Idea of Adding Six More Seats to SCOTUS Is the ‘Right Option’

RUSH EXCERPT:

BUTTIGIEG: “Sure, what we need to do is stop the Supreme Court from sliding toward being viewed as a nakedly political institution. I'm for us contemplating whatever policy options will allow that to be possible. One of them involves having 15 instead of 9 justices, but I'm not just talking about suppose I get elected as president and daring the next president who might be conservative to throw on a couple more. That's the last thing we want to do. What we need to do is stop every vacancy from becoming this Iowa pock liptic battle that harms the country. The proposal I mentioned that is one of many we should probably consider does expand the court to 15, but it changes the structure a little bit. Only ten of them are politically appointed by democratic or Republican presidents. The other five can only be seated by unanimous consent of the remaining ten. So the idea is that those it five by necessity will be those who command the respect of the other ten and can be counted on to think for themselves. I don't know that's nestly the right option, there's others that have been floated that would involve a rotation of people up for the bench. I know you used radical in the question, but there's some legal scholars who think this could be done just by statute, not with a change to the Constitution. So I think that it whichever particular mechanism is best, we need to begin to debate on what it will take to make sure our Supreme Court is less political. I don't think there's anything about this approach that's anymore radical than the shattering of norms they have gone through to get the court to where it is today.”