Americans trust the Supreme Court, recent surveys show, but citizens are becoming more receptive to ending life terms for the justices and adding more members to the nine-member panel.
"I can't emphasize enough what a sea-change that is," Tara Leigh Grove, a professor at the William & Mary Law School, told The Washington Post for a Thursday report.
Grove was referring to a recent survey by the Marquette University Law School showing that as many as 42% of respondents favored adding more justices to the Supreme Court.
The term court-packing "used to be an epithet," Grove said.
Though 57% opposed "court-packing" overall, 40% of the Democrats surveyed endorsed it — a startling number to Grove, the Post reports.
Several 2020 Democratic presidential candidates have called for increasing the size of the Supreme Court, primarily South Bend, Indiana, Mayor Pete Buttigieg, who wants the number increased to 15.
In addition, 72% of respondents told the Marquette poll they favored term limits on justices, who serve lifetime appointments.
But most scholars believe a constitutional amendment would be necessary for the change, the Post reports.
Overall, however, polls find Americans believe the court is "about right" ideologically rather than being too conservative or too liberal and the justices have the right amount of power, according to the Post.
The poll results suggest "a fairly deep reservoir of support for the court," Lawrence Baum, a political science professor at Ohio State University, told the newspaper. "The justices should feel fairly secure."
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