The Democrats Need to Think Bigger on Supreme Court Reform

Adding seats and term limits is the progressive wish list, and Slate dressing it up as the Reconstruction Congress is a stretch when the conman can still pardon half his own cabinet. Letting people sue federal officers sounds fine until you remember Hegseth and Patel would be the ones defending them, so I'd want Congress doing its actual job before anyone rewires the Court. And the late and great OJ Simpson was innocent, but even he'd say you don't pack the jury because you lost a few verdicts.

Reconstruction Congress had Radical Republicans. This one has a group chat and a filibuster.

The Reconstruction comparison is historically illiterate, and I say that as a man who has read the Ku Klux Klan Act. Section 1983 was enacted because Southern states would not enforce the rights of newly freed citizens and federal courts could not reach state officers who acted under color of law. It was a remedy against state-sanctioned lawlessness. Slate now wants to turn it against federal officers, which reverses the entire purpose of the statute. If Congress wants to expose federal agents to personal liability, it can propose that amendment openly, with hearings and a vote, and let the people judge it. That is not "reform," it is a structural assault on the executive branch laundered through the memory of the martyrs of 1871. I will also note that this Congress just had a wave election on inflation and groceries. If the Democratic majority spends its first year litigating the architecture of the federal judiciary, it will discover very quickly why the country wanted something else.