Nine is Not Prime: Court Size as Both Weaponization and Solution for Supreme Court Political Polarization, Inefficiency and Bias

Since the creation of the judicial branch, the nation’s highest court has displayed vulnerabilities to politicization, biases and inefficiency. More specifically, the number of justices on the Supreme Court is a culprit in exacerbating these challenges. The Supreme Court has fluctuated its size six times, excluding unsuccessful attempts to change it, with the number of justices as low as five and as high as ten. Though the 155-year stasis in the number of Supreme Court justices has provided relative stability, the history of the institution reveals that previous and current sizes of the Supreme Court leave it vulnerable to not only political polarity and gender biases, but also inefficacy in hearing an adequate number of cases presented to the Court. The paper argues that while the size of the High Court has been a hurdle, it can also be a solution to ensure an independent, fair and productive government branch as the Founders intended.