I was disappointed the two teams were “debating” two subjects, one team essentially complaining about the current court composition and the related process, the other the likelihood of expansion and consequence of expansion. I found only 1 of 4 to be on topic. An altogether frustrating debate.

I think it was very telling that the against side said they couldn't understand the for side's argument because it was "crazy". As of this comment, SCOTUS is poised to hear Moore v Harper, which would allow state legislatures to nullify their voters' choice in presidential elections. This would be legally enshrining the Eastman argument for the J6 coup. That's a hell of a lot more dangerous to the system of government than adding a few seats to the court. Again, the against side couldn't fathom how radical and unhinged this court is. "Trust the system" only works with your blinders on. IMHO this is dangerous thinking which will leave America unprepared for the violent times that are already here.

I thought it was rude too. And against the spirit of the debate. He kept saying the For side was changing what the debate was about but he was doing exactly the same thing when he did that -- the motion wasn't "can we presently expand the supreme court" it was _should_.

She lost me immediately too. I agree with her ideology and I want all the same policies and such as her... but that was a really terrible tactic for addressing legitimate arguments against this motion.

Undecided to Against. Holy cow.. I did not expect to hear such blatantly partisan arguments on the For side. I too think a lot of the regressive decisions being made are bad. I also know that a whole lot of people like them, like half the country in some cases. The Against side raised a lot of really good points in the opening that I never heard good answers to. The closest they came was saying that some of their decisions are affecting the ability of people to vote and therefore making it a stretch to fix the issues through democracy itself. But the question then just comes back to: does have >9 solve the problem? The Against side suggested concrete alternatives like having congress change the shadow docket rules and other ways the Court operates. All of that would've been enough to move me to Against, but it was pretty abhorrent that the For side was given so many chances to address the tit for tat question and kept side stepping it. Closest answer was "tit happens", which was laugh out loud funny and clever and had a seed of something persuasive in it, but it does nothing to assuage the certainty of how angry we liberals will be when Mitch Mconnell makes good on his promise to do the same thing and we start seeing outcomes we _really_ don't like. In the end, I just wish the For side had been able to find more non-partisan arguments that making such a fundamental change is something that should be done in the near future.

he moderator did a great job pressing the question about "tit for tat" (i.e., each party will continue to pack the court when they are in power) and revealed that the proponent did not have a good answer. However, everyone seemed to ignore the bigger elephant in the room. Namely, is the Supreme Court a legitimate part of our institution? The proponent's answer seemed to be "no." Not only do they consider some of the court rulings to be a grave threat to democracy, but also they accused the court as elitist, privileged, and against public opinion. This position is why the proponents did not mind the "tit for tat" problem. To them, a discredited and dysfunctional court is not a disaster; it is the intention. Although the opponent pointed out that the court was not designed to be democratic, the opponent and the moderator failed to address the court's legitimacy directly (not just since Trump "stole the court" but since the beginning of the nation).
While I voted with the opponent, I disagree with their argument that packing the court is impractical. I think radical ideas have their place in public discourse.
I also think the manners of the debaters can be improved. The proponents frequently appeal to public passion and vague "social justice" terms instead of factual and rational analyses. The opponent team displayed some degree of frustration and condescension as they faced people outside of their professional circle.
Finally, I wish to point out a misunderstanding or misstatement from the proponent. Abortion right is not in the constitution; it is based on the Supreme Court's interpretation of the constitution in Roe v Wade. Therefore, although I would not condone the court's reversal of Roe v Wade, such a decision would not be unconstitutional.

I too was disappointed in both panels. Didn’t hear much from a legal standpoint only one side feared loosing abortion and the other it will
Never happen ( never say never)

I was rather disappointed in this debate. I didn't feel like either side made particularly compelling arguments.
The against side's argument tended to boil down to speculation without providing any reason for their speculation. Just stating "it will be bad" doesn't make it so. I also found them to be rude and condescending. Especially at the point when they were accusing the for side of trying to rephrase the debate question while at the same time seeming to forget that the question was "We SHOULD expand the Supreme Court and not "CAN we..."
The for side also seemed to focus to much on one point and didn't really expand or challenge anything the against side was arguing. I kept waiting for them to make the "Should" vs "Can" point and/or point out that 5 of the current 9 judges were appointed by Presidents who lost the popular vote and pushed through by senate majorities that represented fewer citizens than the senate minority. To me, that is the most valid argument for expanding the Supreme Court.

The For side did not make a single argument that the cases they were upset about were wrong as a matter of law, just that the outcomes were 'bad'. The whole point of SCOTUS and lifetime appointments is that what is popular is not necessarily what the law says, and courts should rule on what the law says. If the law is bad, the process for changing it is called 'legislation' and 'Constitutional Amendments'.

"I still enjoy iQ2… but there has certainly been a dispiriting slide to giving voice Ave credence to far too many heartless, callous right-wing minds."
You know that is how debates work, right? How interesting are debates between "Is the GOP really bad or really really bad?"

I get what they are labelling a "shadow" docket. It's the prep that gets cases screened and see if they merit the proper review at SCOTUS. Here individual justices (really their staffs) have some power. There are still objective criteria a judge has to adhere to to deny entrance into the "official" docket.
The wheels of justice are painfully slow, but we can (for now) still count on them to grind in a predictable fashion under a constitution and checks and balances we find superior.
The 9-member US SCOTUS may be the worst forum to check congress and the president against abusive laws, except every other that has be proposed.

Only 3 of the panel should have been given a voice. Tamara lost me immediately. She was clearly motivated by activism alone and doesn’t seem to understand the courts role. If you had presented a more reasonable person in her place, maybe an argument about the actual merits of 9 Justices could have been debated. Your bad on debater selection on this one.

The reason why the supreme court has become partisan is because Party has been allowed to be in charge of the mechanisms of nomination. Party itself is inherently authoritarian so, of course, this is the final result - a ideologically biased court. So, the solution is two parts. One is to balance the court to match the number of Circuit courts. But, in order to eliminate future partisan packing we must disengage the process of nomination from Party processes. We need a fiercely independent commission of constitutional scholars and historians that know the spirit of intent of the Constitution that provides for

1) Free, fair, accessible, protected elections for all citizens;
2) Checking and balancing all inherently authoritarian powers that should now include Party and Corporation with Religion and The Branches to achieve compromise governance;
3) The equal application of the rule of just law for all citizens; and the support and defense of independent evidence-based science and journalism in driving public policy.

This is a crisis in the breakdown of checks and balances because of Party and Corporation not being formally recognized as inherently authoritarian. Party should be no where near the mechanisms of elections and appointments in the Judiciary. Corporations should be no where near the financing of elections and appointments in the regulatory agencies. We have lost our representative democracy.

Not if we write a law to limit the court to say 11 then do not allow replacements until we get back to 9 then impose the 18 year service term.

One of the members of the against side seemed to dismiss the proposition out of hand, that was rude, he was also condescending in his remarks. This did not help his side.
I thought the for side were a bit weak with their arguments but made a better case. Tamara's point of we do not have time to wait for the judges to retire or die was compelling.
My question is; could we write a law that expands the court for now, and then as judges retire or pass not replace them until we get back to 9. Then at that point institute the 18 year term of service?

"The For team was far from perfect, but still not nearly as offensive and egregiously submissive to the injustices suffered by so many as result in part to the Supreme Court for centuries. ".... should end with "as the Against team showed to be"...

The history of the U.S. Supreme Court is dominated by white men, thus both intentionally and unintentionally solidifying white supremacy. Those facts alone should be enough for every human on U.S. soil to be FOR this motion. The For team was far from perfect, but still not nearly as offensive and egregiously submissive to the injustices suffered by so many as result in part to the Supreme Court for centuries. Sadly, in this country, an abolition of white supremacy is considered “too radical”. So here we are.
On a side note, I still enjoy iQ2… but there has certainly been a dispiriting slide to giving voice Ave credence to far too many heartless, callous right-wing minds.

I'd be interested in learning more about the so-called "shadow docket", which they have been using more frequently on important issues of late. There is definitely not much accountability for the decisions made in this manner. I'm not sure there is any "there" there, but it doesn't produce confidence in the public.

Both side put out very weak arguments. I imagine there could be some interesting arguments to hear on the "for" side, even without the shenanigans of recent years. And there should be some very strong arguments on the "against" side, but they didn't seem very prepared to say anything other than "This is radical and no one likes it."

I also found that line of argument not only unpersuasive, but distasteful. The states argument was a fine one and would suffice to say: show me how this will actually work before we try a big experiment with a major, longstanding institution in our country. The idea that it's radical is fine to point out, and he could have led from there to say that people understand how bad the notion is, etc., but he should argue on the merits of the position itself rather than who supports it. Also, not that it's a barometer of "serious" people, but several Democratic nominees last election (e.g., Buttigieg) talked about expanding the court, and the whole premise of the debate was that Biden unveiled a commission to study this.

Completely agree, Erica.

The “for” side did a terrible job in the opening sections … the argument was either a naked power grab, or disingenuous alarmism when the court does not rule the way you wish it. The never really expanded their argument beyond this and provided no real data to support their case, or response on the tit for tat question.

The use of “court packing” to describe the installation of the last two justices is also 1984 double speak for what they propose – ultimate confession through projection. The argument that elections are being suppressed is refuted by the data (most people voting ever). In short, they wish to turn the supreme court into another political unit, which is was specifically designed to avoid.

And point of order, we live in a republic, not a direct democracy.

The “against” team also did poorly, as they did not respond very well to the very thin argument pursed by the “for” side.

The best thing about the court is they publish the basis of their decisions in written opinions. There they have to use the law as the basis of those opinions. John Marshall said is well the court's job is to say what the LAW is. Partisanship is overblow because one must twist views entwined with LAW. Yes this can happen and bend a certain direction but only to the extent the LAWS exist.

I was puzzled by how those against the motion did not point out the red herrings coming from the other side. There is not (I'm paraphrasing Brummer) "only a small number of people that can vote," for instance. The supreme court was never intended to legislate or to improve individual lives. It is only a deliberative body with respect to legal interpretation, apart from a genuinely activist period in the 1960's and 1970's. Today's supreme court justices are pretty much all textualists on both sides of the political spectrum, and it would take a lot more than 4 additional justices to change that.

So many missed opportunities on the opposing side. They undermined their own case when Amar used an ad ridiculum logical fallacy calling court expansion "crazy." He then used another logical fallacy appealing to authority by pointing out that no current plurality exists to support expanding the court. No one pushed back against Lithwick dishonestly changing the meaning of the word "packing" with regard to the court, though Amar did kind of chuckle at Lithwick's "brilliant" use of language.

On the subject of Lithwick's rhetorical misdirection, it occurred to me that her principal argument (had she made it honestly) is that the purpose of this bill is to effect political outcomes. If the current system really is broken, then we should assume that she thinks it's broken because she disagrees with its politics. The solution then becomes to change its politics, something she would not admit to when directly asked about what those 4 new justices would look like. The opposition pointed out that based on the current makeup of the US senate, only a very moderate person would have any chance of being confirmed. As Amar weakly pointed out about why this bill is "crazy," it would inevitably just lead to a continual expansion of the supreme court, since whichever party holds control of the senate would always be able to get new members on the high court. The opposing side missed an opportunity to point out that this is how politics work in Poland, for instance, where the supreme court has 120 members and regularly legislates in an undemocratic way.

Not a satisfying debate whatsoever, and probably would not change many minds unless for people who have no familiarity with the issue coming into it. Many better arguments against the motion exist than the ones put forth in the podcast, but I think the emotional misdirection of those in favor is pretty consistent with the best arguments I have heard elsewhere.

@Michael Shipman
The thing is that I would actually have bought into the argument for adding 2 justices. I would see this as a sort of "Garland adjustment". That is something that you could argue is simply addressing prior packing.

I agree that the professor's behavior was disappointing for someone with his background. I had a little more sympathy for him though because the other side didn't actually offer much to argue against. I feel like when one side's entire argument is a political "We don't like the way the Supreme Court is ruling" and they never even address the argument that adding justices is only a short term fix that has major long term consequences, it makes it hard to avoid just repeating yourself.
At the same time, I'd encourage you to re-listen to some of the prior debates. There are plenty of examples of poor debate etiquette from prior episodes. The student loan debate comes quickly to mind.

There is a fundamental problem with this debate, both sides are advocating for a change to the status quo, which makes a muddled debate. Rather than have someone defend the system as is it, the against were themselves pushing a change they thought would be better. I also think it is the better solution to address the issues, though without those pushing for extreme change there would be no way the system would willingly change at all. It’s called the status quo for a reason. Seems like there should be more alliance between the factions on display here.

IQ2US is going downhill. The for side in this debate had nothing more than partisan rants. John Donvan admonished the against side to stick to the for side's principles, but there were none. Very disingenuous for John Donvan. I'm very disappointed.

It's the nature of any opinion that there will be some who are opposed and some for it. But I think when you see the Supreme Court starting to rule using the shadow docket on the right to terminate an abortion or upholding deliberate attempts to curtail people's right to vote, or counting the days until the next school shooting, it's really hard to tell someone that these issues can simply wait until cooler heads prevail. As it is, people have endured this imbalanced system for close to 250 years. It's time we start listening to those people for a change.

That sounds like an appeal to tradition more than an argument of why maintaining the status quo with the Supreme Court is a good idea. Poll after poll shows that a majority of the public supports abortion rights, gun control, and a number of other things the Supreme Court rules against. I think if your argument is that the structure of the House and Senate and the electoral college are primary features of the federal government, then why should that matter? How does all of this improve representation and make us a healthier democracy? And if those two things aren't your goals, why aren't they?

To be fair, I think the number 4 was used as a null integer for the debate. Whether 4 or 40 or 164 was immaterial. His point is that it would not solve any problems and it would only lead to disaster. The non-lifetime appointments were not part of the debate - it would have been a better debate. I am hard right and I would support such a measure for term limits to our courts.

We are a federal Republic. If you recall, it is the PEOPLE who are supposed to be first and the States to be second and the Federal government to be last (and least influential). What you are calling the "problem" is in fact a primary "feature" of our nation. I would submit that when the 17th Amendment was passed, we began an inexorable slide into tyranny and groupthink.

It may be important to remember that while you would want a "more balanced" SCOTUS, not all will agree with you. Some people most certainly want an imbalanced Court. Your comment assumes much (that is obviously not true) and seems based on fear (not often a good place from which to make reasoned decisions).

I found the "For" side entirely uncompelling. They failed to address why an increase in simple numbers would correct the deficiencies they see in the court, its makeup, or its process. I would also agree the place to fix these issues would be in a non-lifetime appointment (depending on the methodology to be used) AND/OR in Congress doing it job better in how it legislates. Amar, while right in calling their position crazy, lost ground in using that as an avenue of rebuttal. Brummer argued exclusively from emotion and I found her characterization of conservative intention behind their policy preferences to be distasteful and condescending.

I voted for against because I don’t think the debaters for the motion addressed the issue of how adding more justices will make things better in the long run/ why it wouldn’t back fire (and I believe it will). Regarding debating styles, didn’t really like Prof.Amar on the against side, but the other sides sometimes give disingenuous answers…

I've listened to IQ2 debates via podcast on my runs for many years, but never attended in person (pre-pandemic), nor joined on-line and voted on a measure. I felt compelled to chime in this time because of my frustration with Professor Amar as a debater.
Words obviously matter, and filtering an important topic into a brief debate motion is fraught with risk. Risk that a debater could focus on the wording to argue for or against a motion rather than engage in a thoughtful discussion about the intent of the engagement. When I first read of the motion, I understood it to mean "There is an existential problem with the way the Supreme Court is currently functioning, and increasing the number of justices, with other possible interventions (like term limits and staggered appointments), is appropriate now rather than leaving the status quo." I agreed with that sentiment, and thus voted in favor of the motion before listening to the debate.
I felt the debaters began by making excellent points, and I definitely reconsidered my vote. The practical points made by Professor Amar regarding "tit for tat" reactions to court expansion and unintended consequences were compelling. However, when he lowered himself to calling the motion "crazy," and thus (in my opinion) implying that anyone arguing in favor was cognitively inferior, I became disgusted. At that point, he should have at least been much more strongly rebuked by the moderator, or better yet he should have been disqualified as a debater and the process redone with someone more in line with IQ2 principles. Then, when he seemed to distill his argument against the motion into the observation that no political figure "who actually count" and "who matters" (his words) has gone on record to support the idea of court expansion, or that no state has more than nine members, disqualifies the motion as even plausible, I became furious. I believe the Second Amendment of the Constitution is outdated and does more harm than good to citizens of the US, and I believe I can make a cogent defense of that position, but I doubt I could get many national political figures (who "count" or who "matter") to go on record to support me. I don't believe that makes my opinion crazy.
Professor Amar, you owe an apology to your opponents in this debate and to IQ2 and its listeners, and you should not be invited back for any future debates. Though I'm not entirely proud of it, I voted in favor of the motion after the debate as much to rebuke you as to support the merits of the motion.

I think it's fair to question whether John Roberts would vote against his five Federalist Society-approved colleagues in such a situation, which is what you'd need to get to a 5-5 tie. I suspect, given his ruling in Shelby County, that would not be the case.

I caution against reading too much into Roberts' dissent in Whole Women's Health. His dissent was entirely focused on procedure - he thought flipping over Roe should've waited for briefing and argument before issuing a written opinion. There's no indication he thinks Roe was ever good law, much less thinks it's still good law.

I don't see how it's reasonable to admit that your position is always going to be "we need to add just enough justices so we get the rulings we want". You could clearly see from the beginning that even the debaters recognized there was a problem with their argument if it was exposed how outcome based it was.

That puts the two viewpoints on equal footing, inaptly. The Republicans have already messed with the Court’s membership for 40+ years. They’re still bitter about Earl Warren and Stevens and Souter not turning out to be reliably conservative votes and figured they’d fix their supposedly “bad” nominations by simply stealing one from the People who elected Barack Obama to pick that Justice. And then by putting Justice Barrett on the Court under the same circumstances they claimed principle on for not even allowing a vote or hearings on Merrick Garland, a choice far, far to the right of an Earl Warren or JP Stevens.

This argument of Amar and Phillips presupposes the Republicans will react in bad faith and nominate huge additional numbers of Justices to counter any move by Democrats to do anything other than wait this out for 50 years, hoping in the ensuing time that we’ve not returned to Jim Crow 2.0.

And the plain fact of the matter is that folks from Amar and Phillips’ generation won’t be there in 50 years, as sad as that is. Folks from my generation and younger will be. And we’re raising our kids right now. We do not, as a generation or series of them, believe that we have time to waste, most especially with regards to climate change. This is the most major difference between the two sides presented here: age and gender. It is indeed unsurprising that our foremost SCOTUS litigator (and senior partner at Sidley) and a chaired professor who’s spent his entire adult life in New Haven, Connecticut, with all the privileges they enjoy by virtue of their highly esteemed positions, don’t understand why any of this is urgent. Immigration reform is needed *now*. Radical action to prevent climate change is needed *now* after 40 years of conservative/moderate mismanagement and dysmanagement on the issue. Eliminating or severely curtailing qualified immunity is needed *now*. Action on voting rights is needed *now*. Folks need to address that when claiming we’ve got time to wait. We don’t. Not really.

That's called being reasonable. Those numbers are low because they're trying to be reasonable. And yet again people from the right are hammering those in the centre for trying to be reasonable.

I'm not in the centre - rather to the left of it, I'm afraid. My less-performatively-reasonable view is that I'd recommend adding 9 more Justices, and changing them all to 18 year terms. The 18 year term idea was written up really well by Federalist Society co-founder Steven Calabresi, that's how you know it must be bipartisan because a leftist is over here cheering for a right-wing professor's brilliant 18 year term idea.

It makes sense because that way we get a new Supreme Court Justice every year, constantly bringing in new ideas and new thinking. And no more of the gamesmanship that apparently only Republicans are allowed to play with SCOTUS nominees. Problem solved, and having a multiple of nine solves the math problem apparently Yale Law Professor Akhil Amar thinks is intractable, as if 20 year terms with 10 Justices wouldn't work, or 6 or 18 or 24 year terms with 18 Justices wouldn't work.

Honestly Mr. Amar sounded a little bit like Harland Williams in the 1998 film There's Something About Mary insisting to Ben Stiller that there's no way you could go to six minute abs. "Seven's the key!"

I was excited to see my old clinical law professor Carter Phillips debate this. But among the many things that stuck out to me as odd, here's the ones I can't get past:

First, only if one ignores the fact that the Republican Party has become an openly white supremacist party (see, e.g., the recent open support of so-called "replacement theory" by Republicans with *no* pushback from the Party) can one stand behind an argument based on the distinction between a partisan gerrymander and a racial gerrymander. There is zero distinction between these two things in 2021. None. So harping on some imagined distinction isn't apt.

Second, claiming the Court has "stayed out of" these debates stretches the truth a lot. Mr. Phillips also stated in response to Tamara Brummer (at 36:42, again at 37:15) that Congress should be the forum for fixing voting rights. But Mr. Phillips, Congress *did* fix voting rights. We passed the Voting Rights Act. We reauthorized it in 2006. It was the *Court* who inserted itself into the VRA, not the Congress. It was Chief Justice Roberts writing for the *Court* claiming the motivations for the VRA were no longer relevant. It was not the Congress. So claiming that now, when we want the Court to fix their collossal error, that Congress needs to do that... that sounds disingenuous from my vantage point, however it was meant. As Tamara pointed out, *nothing* stops this same Court from invalidating all Congressional action to reauthorize the VRA or anything like it. Nothing.

Finally, these are all just suggestions and ideas to help the Court *regain* its legitimacy. Mr. Phillips seemed concerned about the problem of whether the idea would lead to the Court's loss of legitimacy. That's already gone, at least if one is not white and male and wealthy in the United States. Does anyone think that a Court willing to overturn Roe in an unwritten shadow docket ruling, which 58% of America is opposed to, has any sort of claim to democratic legitimacy? It's the most political issue in the past 50 years of our Republic, and them ruling in a way that is explicitly conservative and hands an unqualified victory to one political party when that's at odds with the majority of the public... that's *them* putting their legitimacy on the line. And in the 1930s the Court itself decided 9 was more important than continuing to flip over the New Deal programs. Why aren't Akhil Amar and Carter Phillips even mentioning that? Why shouldn't these Justices do the same thing as the Justices who switched in time to save nine?

One other comment, if I may. I found Tamara Brummer particularly persuasive. Whereas her opponents were focused more on whether expanding the Supreme Court would be possible or strategic, she is focused more on the reality of the situation, which is that we have large segments of our population who simply can't wait another day for meaningful change to occur. Paeans to tradition and the noble institution of the Supreme Court are all well and good if lives aren't on the line, but the fact of the matter is that people are counting on a more balanced Supreme Court. So long as people are counting on systemic changes to occur, we can't be paralyzed by fear about how Republicans might retaliate once they have control of the Senate and Presidency. We need to do what we can right now to restore justice for people who need justice right now.

The current Supreme Court is an extension of the problem that occurs when states like Wyoming are allowed to have a disproportionate say in our democracy. That is, they are a reflection of counting the land itself rather than the people and where they live. The Court was chosen under that imbalanced system (reflected in the outdated electoral college system and imbalances within the Senate), and the current justices don't reflect where most of us are on a wide variety of issues, including abortion, guns and campaign finance. Expanding the Supreme Court is about restoring balance.

It was not specified that the number was 4. It just said in favor of expanding the court. I am in favor of expanding it by one. We have had a lot of decisions that were decided by a single vote. An even number on the court would address this. If the vote was a tie, the decision of the lower court would stand.

The side for the motion's claim that they are looking for balance or a redress for Garland are stripped when they use the number 4, as if it were merely coincidence that 4 would be the number required to get the decisions they want. No doubt if RBG had been replaced by Biden they would only be asking for 2 and if Breyer had passed away during Trump's administration they would be asking for 6.

There is only one question to be asked: Would you vote the same way in four years with a Republican president and a Republican-controlled congress? If your answer changes, then it is dishonest and disingenuous.

Once the precedent is set of expanding the Supreme Court by a Congress that dislikes its rulings, then every time power changes, the new Congress will expand the Supreme Court, until it ceases to function.