Law profs argue in Bloomberg Law that expanding SCOTUS to 15 justices 'would not be court packing' in a negative sense

“Court packing” means different things to different people. It just so happens that to a lot of liberals, it means the wrong thing.

When Donald Trump took office and Mitch McConnell got to work filling judicial vacancies, liberals and Democrats — including many Democrats who knew better — cried “COURT PACKING!”

And apparently Bloomberg Law — or at least a pair of alleged law professors writing for Bloomberg Law — has decided that that’s reason enough to effectively change the term’s definition:

Changing the law to allow 15 U.S. Supreme Court justices would not be court packing. It would allow the court to take many more cases and address some of the urgent issues that it currently neglects, @TonjaJacobi and @matthewsag write. https://t.co/Vrf7bu966L

— Bloomberg Law (@BLaw) May 10, 2021

Shorter Bloomberg Law: “Not packing the courts is literally court packing; literally packing the courts is not court packing.”

And with that, the definition of court packing has been completely reversed.

This was literally the definition of court packing until Democrats decided that anything other than adding Democrat-selected justices counted as "packing." https://t.co/C7oPci2AMY

— Shut up, Todd! (@toddrmaxwell) May 10, 2021

Court packing isn't court packing if Democrats do it. https://t.co/BBEfzTVLYX

— Barrett Wilson (@BarrettWilson6) May 10, 2021

What a blatant lie. It's the very definition of court packing. Stop trying to change the definition of words to match your agenda

— Jordon Jindra (@hover389) May 10, 2021

Changing the meaning of words and phrases because their existing (true) connotations render them unpopular and pretending no such change has taken place is pretty much what “Orwellian” means

— Virginia Yankee (@VirginiaYankee1) May 10, 2021

Words have lost all meaning. https://t.co/80bM14NrMX

— Andy Grewal (@AndyGrewal) May 10, 2021

The Party of Science™ is just straight-up making stuff up now.

Fifty 👏🏻 Thousand 👏🏻 SCOTUS 👏🏻 Justices 👏🏻

— W. Trevor Manning ن (@Kardea) May 10, 2021

Where does it end?

For what it’s worth, the authors of the piece concede that packing the court “would further politicize the judiciary and invite retributive court packing when Republicans inevitably regain power.” And yet, in the same piece, they argue that increasing the number of SCOTUS justices to 15 would actually mitigate potential ideological extremism. A more politicized judiciary would also be less vulnerable to the whims of ideological extremism?

So basically they’re just throwing stuff at the wall hoping something’ll eventually stick.

Cool. If it's not court packing, then open the slots, but reserve half of them for the next Republican president to fill. https://t.co/6CGLg6UjK6

— Eric Spencer (@JustEric) May 10, 2021

Whoa … let’s not get carried away.