even with the current supreme court generally being on the side of gun owners and ruling in our favor in cases such as the heller case there is still a serious threat that this could be changed even if none of the current pro judges die or retire. as most of you know the SCOTUS consists of 9 justices. the interesting fact is this has not always been the case. the constitution does not set the number of justices but it is set by congress. if anti's get a senate seating of over 60% there would be no way to filibuster a bill to increase the number of seats in the SCOTUS. this would allow a hostile president and congress to appoint any number of justices necessary to sway rulings in their favor.
this may sound like it would be unlikely to ever happen, but in fact in the past something very much like this has happened(the opposite of this actually) in our history. in 1866 after the assassination of Lincoln, Andrew Johnson took the presidential seat. there was many issues between him and the republican majority in congress. at that time the supreme court was comprised of 10 seats. in an attempt to limit Johnson's political power the congress passed The Judicial Circuits Act of 1866. this act reduced the seats of the SCOTUS to 7 seats. it did not remove any judges, but blocked up to 3 new judges from being able to be appointed on death or retirement of current sitting judges. during Johnson's term 1 justice in the middle of pending nomination was blocked from taking seat. another justice died and was not replaced in 1867. after Johnson was replaced as president in 1869 congress passed the Circuit Judges Act of 1869. this increased the size of the court to 9 justices and thus creating one SCOTUS seat to be nominated by Grant.
this same tactic could be used in the opposite route to create more seats for a president to fill if he has a large enough support in congress. these extra seats then could not just be removed by subsequent sessions. they would have to wait to be readjusted by the death or retirement of then current sitting judges. most likely these new justices would be younger and on average have a longer nature life expectancy than the current conservative justices. this could create a good chance of a long stretch of a majority of opposing non-conservative anti firearm justices.
all this would take is at least 60 seats in the senate and an over 50% block of the house of representatives to be realized. some of the congressmen might not even suspect anything if it is concealed as some law to lessen the burden on the current sitting judges.
this may sound like it would be unlikely to ever happen, but in fact in the past something very much like this has happened(the opposite of this actually) in our history. in 1866 after the assassination of Lincoln, Andrew Johnson took the presidential seat. there was many issues between him and the republican majority in congress. at that time the supreme court was comprised of 10 seats. in an attempt to limit Johnson's political power the congress passed The Judicial Circuits Act of 1866. this act reduced the seats of the SCOTUS to 7 seats. it did not remove any judges, but blocked up to 3 new judges from being able to be appointed on death or retirement of current sitting judges. during Johnson's term 1 justice in the middle of pending nomination was blocked from taking seat. another justice died and was not replaced in 1867. after Johnson was replaced as president in 1869 congress passed the Circuit Judges Act of 1869. this increased the size of the court to 9 justices and thus creating one SCOTUS seat to be nominated by Grant.
this same tactic could be used in the opposite route to create more seats for a president to fill if he has a large enough support in congress. these extra seats then could not just be removed by subsequent sessions. they would have to wait to be readjusted by the death or retirement of then current sitting judges. most likely these new justices would be younger and on average have a longer nature life expectancy than the current conservative justices. this could create a good chance of a long stretch of a majority of opposing non-conservative anti firearm justices.
all this would take is at least 60 seats in the senate and an over 50% block of the house of representatives to be realized. some of the congressmen might not even suspect anything if it is concealed as some law to lessen the burden on the current sitting judges.
