Maxwell School News and Faculty Media, Opinion and Analysis

Keck talks to PolitiFact about court packing

Thomas Keck, Michael O. Sawyer Chair of Constitutional Law and Politics, says a court expansion can be justified. "If it’s the case that Sen. McConnell and other Republican leaders engaged in illegitimate court packing of their own from 2016 to 2020, then from the Democrats’ perspective, an additional round of court reform is necessary to correct for those earlier rounds," he says.

April 26, 2021

See related: Congress, Law, Political Parties, SCOTUS, United States

Keck discusses Supreme Court reform, crises of democracy in Washington Post

"Throughout U.S. history, crises of democracy have prompted discussions of Supreme Court reform because the court itself has often been perceived as a barrier to democratic preservation and renewal," writes Thomas Keck, Michael O. Sawyer Chair of Constitutional Law and Politics.

April 13, 2021

Keck quoted in Christian Science Monitor article on the impeachment process

"What I would emphasize is that there are structural problems with our democracy, some of which are really hard to fix, but some of which have emerged recently which there are fixes for," says Thomas Keck, professor of political science and Michael O. Sawyer Chair of Constitutional Law and Politics.

February 18, 2021

See related: Federal, SCOTUS, United States

Bybee talks to WAER about the partisan profile of SCOTUS

November 4, 2020

See related: Political Parties, SCOTUS, United States

Reeher discusses court-packing with Fox News

"I think the tone of things would shift quickly if Biden were elected," Professor of Political Science Grant Reeher says. He adds that there would be "more pushback" if Biden and Democrats actually pushed adding seats to the Supreme Court forward.

October 2, 2020

See related: Political Parties, SCOTUS, United States

Reeher weighs in on rush to fill vacant SCOTUS seat in Lockport Union-Sun & Journal

Grant Reeher discusses the risk for Democrat's in an aggressive push to nominations to fill vacancies in high courts, although it could be perceived as a partisan scheme to stack the court just before an election cycle. Read more in "Top New York Democrats urge delay in filling high court vacancy."

September 30, 2020

See related: SCOTUS, U.S. Elections, United States

Keck talks to WAER about the Supreme Court justice vacancy

Tom Keck writes about the Supreme Court and its history in the light of the death of Ruther Bader Ginsburg caused a vacancy during a republican administration. He is critical of the partisanship of this system, writing "That electoral connection has been sundered in recent decades, as Democrats won the popular vote in six of the past seven presidential elections, while Republicans maintained a lock on the Court."

September 22, 2020

See related: SCOTUS, United States

Keck comments on priority of the Supreme Court in 2020 election in Sinclair Broadcast Group article

"The Republican base has been more focused on that issue [Supreme Court] than the Democratic base has from Reagan forward, roughly," says Thomas Keck, professor of political science and Michael O. Sawyer Chair of Constitutional Law and Politics. "There’s some evidence that that’s shifting."

September 17, 2020

See related: SCOTUS, U.S. Elections, United States

Keck explains role of chief justice in impeachment trial in Al Jazeera

"Impeachment of a U.S. president is an unusual circumstance," says Tom Keck, Michael O. Sawyer Chair of Constitutional Law and Politics. "(The chief justice) is there to oversee a trial, which is something that should be well within his comfort zone. But it's a trial conducted by elected partisan officials. It's not a court, the U.S. Senate."

January 17, 2020

See related: Congress, SCOTUS, United States

Keck weighs in on the future of American democracy in the NY Times

Tom Keck, Michael O. Sawyer Chair of Constitutional Law and Politics, says drastic measures might be needed such as term limits for new justices and keeping open the possibility of expanding the [Supreme] court’s size. "It may be our least-bad option in restoring the court’s role as a democratic guardrail."

November 22, 2019