Sources have told the Journal’s Richard Craver and Bertrand M. Gutierrez that state GOP legislators may soon move to put two additional justices on the state Supreme Court. That would amount to packing the court so that it has a conservative majority. That would be dead wrong because it would subvert the will of the electorate.
While the state’s highest court is theoretically nonpartisan, the court was, until last Tuesday’s election, composed of a 4-3 majority of registered Republicans. But registered Democrat Mike Morgan, a highly qualified Superior Court judge from Wake County, unseated incumbent Bob Edmunds of Greensboro, a registered Republican, flipping the court to a 4-3 Democratic majority.
This was a huge change in this GOP-ruled state where big issues pushed by the GOP leadership are sometimes challenged and decided by the state’s highest court.
The legislature and Republican Gov. Pat McCrory, which could close this deal within weeks, would be within the bounds of the state constitution, which permits a nine-member court.
But they would not be within the bounds of fairness.
Packing courts for political advantage was wrong when Democratic President Franklin Roosevelt tried in vain to do it with the U.S. Supreme Court in the 1930s and was beaten back by Congress, and it’s just as wrong now, as our friend Doug Clark of the News & Record of Greensboro indicated in a blog post last week.
As Clark noted, enlarging our state Supreme Court “is totally unjustified. Its workload doesn’t require more hands.”
If the Journal’s sources are correct, the push to add the seats could come at a special legislative session to vote on money for relief for flooding from Hurricane Matthew.
If it succeeds, it could be approved by McCrory, the Republican governor who is apparently on his way out. Democrat Roy Cooper scored a razor-thin victory over McCrory last Tuesday, but provisional ballots have yet to be counted and the governor has not conceded. A recount has been called for.
We’ve already got more than enough uncertainty and confusion. We don’t need the possibility of court packing adding to that.
GOP leaders should loudly denounce any idea of packing our state’s highest court.
