Getting your Trinity Audio player ready...

To The Editor:

A begrudged Congress controlled by the left wants to “pack the court.”  

Simply put, Congress (at least the House) wants to put enough justices on the bench of the Supreme Court to allow those representatives to use the court to challenge and cancel out any new or existing laws that conflict with their agenda. 

Voters should have the last word in designing what laws are passed in the U.S.  We do that by electing representatives and an administration who favor our choices.  Winners in those elections are a reflection of those choices.  Why, then, should the losing side get to cancel out those choices by installing a group of justices that can be used to do just that? 

Justices are there to interpret laws and not make them.  While packing the court isn’t new and has been done during other administrations, these are highly charged times. So, wouldn’t prudence dictate that we fix the number of justices who sit, and the time they are allowed to sit? Nothing in the Constitution specifies either.  The number can change by an act of Congress, and the time they serve is a custom rather than a law.  The result is that far too much power rests with the court when it is used incorrectly to make laws instead of judging them. 

And since Supreme Court justices are not elected by voters, there is nothing written in the Constitution in this situation that guards against the obvious misuse of government policy.

Peter Kapuscinski

Dillwyn