Dusty Johnson · TranslatePolitics.com

House of Representatives

Proposing an Amendment to the Constitution of the United States to Require That the Supreme Court of the United States Be Composed of Nine Justices

2026-09-02

“I want to keep the Supreme Court at nine justices. Nine is a good number. I don't want the other party to make the court bigger. They want to pack the court to get power. That's bad. We should keep the court the same size. Even liberal justices want nine. I want this amendment to pass. I want the constitution to say nine justices.”

Official Congressional Record

Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentleman from Arizona for yielding. Mr. Speaker, today's debate has convinced me more than ever that we need to cap the number of Supreme Court Justices at nine. Now, for the last 5 years, I have been a leader in this push to keep the nine, and I am thrilled we are taking this measure up today. In Washington, we have a habit of weaponizing everything for political advantage. Seemingly no norm is safe, and indeed prominent leaders on the other side of the aisle have promised us that they will pack the Court with four more Supreme Court Justices when they regain power. Now, the size of the Supreme Court should not be an arms race. It should not swell after an election to be able to grab some additional political power. That is the stuff of banana republics and authoritarian regimes. By the way, I am not making that up. You can look across the globe in recent history and you can see Hungary increasing their court to 15. You can see Turkiye increasing their court to 17. You can see Venezuela increasing their court to an eye-watering 32 justices in the pursuit of political power. This is not a theoretical threat. Let's look to history. For 150 years, nine Supreme Court Justices have served us well. The gentleman from Maryland indicates that there is no possible reason that somebody could support nine as the right number. Actually, Supreme Court Justices support nine as the number. They think that is the right size of the Court to have a collaborative, deliberative, functional Court. That is the Goldilocks spot, and it is not just conservative Justices who say it. Retired liberal Justice Stephen Breyer said nine was the right number, and Ruth Bader Ginsburg, before her death, said nine was the right number. They are joined by thousands of legal minds across the political spectrum. That, the gentleman from Maryland should know, is the right reason to set nine. Today, we have an opportunity, Mr. Speaker, to heed those bipartisan calls, to remove a weapon in the hands of partisans, to defend and to protect a longstanding judicial norm, and to place the number of Supreme Court Justices as nine in our Constitution. Mr. Speaker, I support the measure before us today. Let's keep the nine.

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