court packing

English

Noun

court packing (uncountable)

  1. A change to the number of justices that make up a court of law, in particular the US Supreme Court.
    • 2020 October 4, Quinta Jurecic, Susan Hennessey, “The Skeptic’s Case for Court Packing”, in The Atlantic[1], archived from the original on 7 November 2020, retrieved 22 October 2025:
      We understand these objections; until recently, we shared them, and dismissed court packing as institutionally corrosive and politically unserious. But no longer. The current battle over the Supreme Court changes the calculus; if [Amy Coney] Barrett is confirmed and Trump loses the election, adhering to norms and accepting the status quo on January 20 poses a greater harm than expanding the Court would.
    • 2025 October 16, Ross Douthat, “Amy Coney Barrett Is Looking Beyond the Trump Era”, in The New York Times[2], New York, N.Y.: The New York Times Company, →ISSN, →OCLC, archived from the original on 20 October 2025:
      And now there are still plenty of stinging critiques of the court from the right, but there’s also a substantial movement from the political left that raised possibilities of court packing, adding justices to the Supreme Court, stripping the court of jurisdiction and other things in the Biden era.