Applications for Libby Kingseed Memorial Award Due 9/30

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We want to take a moment to recognize exceptional individuals in our field by extending this invitation from NCDD member org, National Issues Forums Institute, to submit your applications for the Elizabeth “Libby” Kingseed Teaching with Deliberation Memorial Award Libby’s commitment to civic education and deliberation continue to be an inspiration; and it is in this spirit that NIFI has created this award to grant $500 to any K-12 teacher working to implement deliberation or deliberative pedagogy in the classroom.

Applications will be accepted until next Wednesday, September 30th; so make sure you apply ASAP! Learn more about Libby Kingseed and the award in the post below, and find the original post here.

Elizabeth “Libby” Kingseed Teaching with Deliberation Memorial Award

The National Issues Forums Institute (NIFI) is now accepting applications for the Elizabeth “Libby” Kingseed Teaching with Deliberation Memorial Award at this time. A fund established to commemorate and in memory of Libby Kingseed.

Application Process

  • September 30, 2020: Deadline for applications
  • November 2, 2020: Applicants will be notified of the selection committee’s decision
  • Grant Period: December 1, 2020 – November 30, 2021

This grant is not open to organizations. The $500 annual award will be granted to an individual.

Click here to complete the online application form. If you have questions, please contact Darla Minnich at dminnich[at]nifi[dot]org.

About the Grant

The Elizabeth “Libby” Kingseed Teaching with Deliberation Memorial Award recognizes the commitment that she had to civic education, especially her support of teacher networking, experimentation, and reflection on the use of deliberation in the classroom. We anticipate presenting up to three awards to eligible K-12 educators engaged in deliberative practices.

This $500 award is open to any K-12 teacher who is inspired to implement deliberation or deliberative pedagogy in the classroom and who is new to using the practices. The teacher should have a demonstrated commitment to fostering the civic development of students, though it is not necessary that they be a civics or social studies teacher. All K-12 teachers are encouraged to apply.

In addition to completing an application, candidates will be asked to provide:

  • A plan for how deliberation will be used to support student learning, including the resources that will be needed and a draft unit plan.
  • An identified mentor OR evidence of completion of a course or workshop focused on deliberation or deliberative pedagogy
  • Prior to the end of the grant period, awardees will be required to submit a two-page written reflection on what they did and what they learned.

Libby Kingseed was a program officer, and archivist at the Kettering Foundation. Libby was a passionate leader of the foundation’s K-12 civic education research. She worked closely with teachers using National Issues Forums in the classroom. Libby recognized the need for civic education to be included in the education of children in order to help them understand how to be active, engaged citizens in the future.

You can find the original version on this on the NIFI site at https://www.nifi.org/en/elizabeth-“libby”-kingseed-teaching-deliberation-memorial-award.

Founders Month: George Mason, Father of the Bill of Rights!

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Check out the National Constitution Center’s biographies of the Founding Fathers! https://constitutioncenter.org/learn/educational-resources/founding-fathers

It’s Founders Month here in Florida! According to the Florida Department of Education,

Section (s.) 683.1455, Florida Statutes (F.S.), designates the month of September as American Founders‘ Month and s. 1003.421, F.S., recognizes the last full week of classes in September in public schools as Celebrate Freedom Week.

So what does this mean for our schools and kids and teachers? Basically, it’s time to do some learning about the men and women who have helped shape this country. Here on our Florida Citizens blog, we’ll be doing a brief overview of a particular Founder, Framer, thinker, or shaper of this state or this nation and how they made an impact. Today, we look at George Mason!

Sept 29 Mason
It’s American Founders’ Month in Florida. Today, we have one of the most important, but perhaps least remembered, Founders: George Mason.

Why does George Mason matter? After all, he was one of only three delegates to the Convention of 1787 who refused to sign the Constitution. But it is, indeed, that very refusal that tells us why George Mason matters: He is the Father of the Bill of Rights.

It was Mason’s vocal objections, and his work on the Virginia Declaration of Rights, that led to the drafting and incorporation of the Bill of Rights into our Constitution.

Even with the promise from the Federalists to include a Bill of Rights, Mason fought hard against ratification of the Constitution; his arguments failed to persuade enough Virginians to vote against ratification however. And his fervent and sometimes angry opposition to the Constitution in some ways destroyed his relationships with those who he fought beside for independence. In a letter to his son, he wrote that

You know the friendship which has long existed (indeed from our early youth) between General Washington and myself. I believe there are few men in whom he placed greater confidence; but it is possible my opposition to the new government, both as a member of the national and of the Virginia Convention, may have altered the case.

Indeed, Washington himself was bitter about Mason’s opposition, and they never reconciled before Mason’s death in 1792. Despite his opposition to the Constitution, however, is to George Mason that most Americans owed their first tastes of liberty under the new government and his Bill of Rights. You can learn more about George Mason from this excellent lesson provided by the Bill of Rights Institute. 

Grab the PowerPoint slide featured at the top of this post: George Mason AFM

Ontology as a Hidden Driver of Politics

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One of the big epiphanies that I had in writing Free, Fair and Alive with Silke Helfrich, was that a lot of political disagreements are not just about law, politics, or economics. They reflect fundamental clashes of worldviews. They are disputes about how human beings should or can relate to each other and to nature, and what types of societal institutions can support these relationships.

Seen through this lens, many public debates are actually about ontology – the way we understand human existence as it plays out in political and institutional arenas. Call it Ontopolitics – the ways in which basic conceptions about human life affect how we structure our political economy and culture.

For example, the climate crisis may register as a debate about international treaties and industrial practices. But these arguments are implicitly about the nature of human existence and community. Are we really rational, utility-maximizing individuals with no essential relationship to our fellow humans or the Earth, as standard economic theory claims (and as liberal political theory agrees)?  Or are we biological creatures nested within social collectives (“community”) with great capacity for cooperation and, as a species, deeply entangled with nature? Each conception of humanity implies very different sorts of institutions and norms. 

A number of us commoners wanted to probe this deeper, existential substrate of politics and policy.  So in September 2019, the Commons Strategies Group partnered with the Institute for Advanced Sustainability Studies (IASS) of Potsdam, Germany, to convene a deep dive workshop. The pre-pandemic event brought together eighteen activists, philosophers, policy experts, and commons scholars from eleven countries to meet for three days at Silke’s home in Neudenau, Germany.

We’re happy to report that a report synthesizing those conversations is now available. It’s called “Ontology as a Hidden Driver of Politics and Policy: Commoning and Relational Approaches to Governance,” by Zack Walsh and the Commons Strategies Group. Kudos to Zack for his primary role in pulling together the rich discussions into a readable summary! And a big thanks to the IASS for its support of this gathering and Silke for hosting it!

“Our way of making sense of the world – our paradigm – shapes our ability to respond to crisis,” the report begins. “Once a paradigm is established, it is extremely hard to think and behave outside its limits.” The report continues: 

Reading political and economic texts through ontological perspectives allows us to uncover the underlying hidden assumptions informing them. Different frameworks of governance presuppose different assumptions about reality. Today’s mainstream political and economic discourses are increasingly sterile and unfit in large part because they are based on incorrect assumptions about the nature of being. The whole explanatory apparatus informing mainstream politics and economics is fundamentally Eurocentric and outdated, informed by centuries’ old science and philosophy. In this moment of crisis, rethinking governance requires more than re-thinking organizations, structures, and positions—it requires re-thinking the underlying belief systems, value systems, and ethics that inform them.

Although ontology may be seen like arcane philosophical stuff – an arid topic for graduate students, and not so relevant for commoners and activists – that is emphatically not the case if we want to transform politics and culture. Silke and I made this argument in Chapter 2 of our book Free, Fair and Alive, in which we noted how dominant paradigms can blind us to realities right in front of our eyes. For example, many scientists in the 1840s simply could not make sense of newly discovered dinosaur fossils because, living within a worldview of Biblical creationism, they could not imagine the idea of deep time and biological evolution. Today, similarly, market capitalism is arguably the archaic paradigm. Living within its worldview makes it difficult to see the actual dynamics and power of our humanity and earthly systems.  

Our deep dive was a continuation of this line of inquiry -- in effect, that ontology matters. As the deep dive report explains:

The logic of the commons is so different from liberal democracy and market capitalism that it is necessary to rethink the ontological premises informing it. Elinor Ostrom’s institutional analysis and development framework, for example, is the dominant approach to understanding the commons, yet it takes for granted many of the same foundational assumptions of standard political and economic thought [e.g., a focus on the individual as the primary agent; “nature” as separate from humanity; life as relational, not transactional, etc.]. Shifting the paradigm within which we understand governance offers immense transformative potential.

Some of us have come to the conclusion that commons governance should be informed by an ontology that is fundamentally oriented to processes and relations, called “process-relational ontology.” Such a framework could help us build more appropriate, commons-based institutions that leverage and honor our relationships. 

A few nuggets of wisdom harvested from the deep dive:

  • Ontological concepts are really supra-verbal.
  • Very little is possible when people become reactive due to misalignments of core beliefs and epistemologies.
  • Political thought still views agents as rational subjects and interprets relations primarily in terms of cause and effect.

A shift in ontological perspective, or OntoShift as we call it, helps us see human beings as deeply relational creatures who, in turn require different types of political and economic institutions than than one we have now. In markets, the central relationships are transient cash transactions among isolated individuals pursuing their “rational self-interest.” With state power, we are treated as individual citizens whose chief duties are to pay taxes, vote, and be acquiescent. There are very few institutions or legal regimes that affirmatively support the trust-building, sense of shared purpose, and creative innovation that commoning entails. 

Having these sorts of discussions is difficult, pointed out Peter Doran, a law professor at Queen’s University Belfast, because “The modern frame is in active denial of some form of relationality. Western ontology is based on fear and security." He said our bids for ontological security are complex responses to our deep vulnerability as a species. The paradox is that the privileged Western response valorizes control, self-sufficiency, heroic individualism, and a disembodied disposition that are built on a denial of our vulnerability and mortality, resulting in individuals feeling deep disconnection.

Nicole Dewandre, an advisor to the European Commission, admitted that although we may experience thinking as disembodied, without feeling, we also need to be careful not to believe that the other extreme—prioritizing the body over the mind—is the solution. Feeling without thinking can be just as problematic, she noted, leading, for example, to antisocial crowd dynamics and hooliganism. We need to communicate using language in ways that acknowledge our bodies and feelings.

Lieselotte Viaene, an anthropologist at Universidad Carlos III de Madrid, recommended that we adopt Arturo Escobar’s concept of “thinking-feeling with the Earth” (sentipiensan con la Tierra). If we hosted our discussion by the river in the company of other beings, for example, we could deepen our connections between thinking and feeling. Thinking-feeling describes the ways indigenous peoples think, without the Western habit of separating the mind and body, and reason and emotion.

There is much else of interest in the report about Ontopolitics. You can download a PDF version of it here.

Four Threats to American Democracy

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On Friday, September 25, from 12–12:45 p.m., I’ll be moderating a Zoom conversation with Suzanne Mettler and Robert C. Lieberman about their new book, Four Threats: The Recurring Crises of American Democracy. You can join us online.

The four threats are: partisan polarization, efforts to exclude some people from the polity, economic inequality, and executive aggrandizement. Mettler and Lieberman provide vivid historical narratives of five previous moments in US history when one or more of these threats almost brought us down. These narratives are compelling: well-told, full of overlooked but relevant characters and details, and suspenseful. They show that our republic has often hung by a thread. Worse, the solution to the threat of polarization has often been to forge an elite bipartisan consensus at the expense of society’s least advantaged, who have always included people of African descent. For instance, the truly dangerous partisan conflict of 1800 yielded to the “Era of Good Feelings” because of a bipartisan consensus to uphold slavery.

Mettler and Lieberman argue that although we have faced one or more of these threats before, now is the first time all four have come together.

We’ll discuss their argument, consider some of the historical cases, and focus especially on what we should do now.

NCDD Proud Partner of Online Facilitation Unconference – #OFU2020!

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NCDD is proud to be a partner of the Online Facilitation Unconference 2020 (#OFU2020), hosted by the Center for Applied Community Engagement LLC! Mark your calendars for October 19-25th, to join the 7th annual OFU event where attendees will have the opportunity to strengthen their virtual facilitation skills. FYI NCDD members can receive a 20% discount on tickets (see below for promo code)! We encourage you to read more about #OFU2020 in the post below and register here.

In addition, you can get a teaser of some helpful civic tech tools for virtual engagement work at NCDD’s Online Engagement Summit happening next week! This free event is co-hosted with the Center for Public Deliberation at Colorado State University, and will be this coming Tuesday, September 29th from 1-3pm Eastern, 10am -12pm Pacific – more info on the summit here.

Mark Your Calendars: OFU20, October 19–25

For the seventh time since 2013, the Online Facilitation Unconference (OFU) will take place this October 19-25, once again alongside and as part of IAF’s International Facilitation Week.

OFU is an event for newbies and experts alike. Whether you are a seasoned facilitator pro or a beginner, whether you are already highly skilled using technology for this work or still trying to figure out the possibilities – OFU provides a venue where you can ask and answer questions, share and solicit advice, discuss your latest project, challenge or idea, explore new tools, discover new tricks, and find like-minded colleagues.

Register to join here! Folks in the NCDD network can use the discount code “OFU_NCDD_20” to receive 20% off your tickets.

The Program

At its core, OFU is an unconference, meaning the vast majority of the program will be created by the participants in real time based on everyone’s interests and needs. The unconference sessions will take place in the second half of the week (Thursday through Saturday, October 22–24).

To help everyone warm up a little, we will offer a handful of pre-scheduled “seed” sessions, which will take place earlier in the week (Monday through Wednesday, October 19–21).

New this year, we will offer a mix of sponsored sessions from our tech exhibitors. These may include demos, guided tours, cases studies, or conversations about where the industry is headed, though how a sponsor structures their session(s) in terms of duration and format is completely up to them. These sessions will also take place earlier in the week, and we encourage our participants to explore the tools further during the unconference and – where appropriate – possibly integrate them into their sessions.

With that in mind, here’s what’s on the agenda… [Click Here to learn more about the OFU agenda!]

We expect to see a lot of new faces this year, particularly those practitioners who until recently were still on the fence regarding delivering their skills and services in virtual environments but have since been forced to jump in with both feet due to the pandemic.

Can’t wait to see everyone. Hope you can join us!

You can find even more information on the OFU site at www.ofuexchange.net/.

Founders Month: Mercy Otis Warren

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Check out the National Constitution Center’s biographies of the Founding Fathers! https://constitutioncenter.org/learn/educational-resources/founding-fathers

It’s Founders Month! According to the Florida Department of Education,

Section (s.) 683.1455, Florida Statutes (F.S.), designates the month of September as American Founders‘ Month and s. 1003.421, F.S., recognizes the last full week of classes in September in public schools as Celebrate Freedom Week.

So what does this mean for our schools and kids and teachers? Basically, it’s time to do some learning about the men and women who have helped shape this country. Here on our blog, we’ll be doing a brief overview of a particular Founder, Framer, thinker, or shaper of this this nation and how they made an impact.

Sept 19 Warren

Today, we take a look at one of the most influential of those women who played a role in the establishment and early days of the United States: Mercy Otis Warren.

Mercy Otis Warren was one of the most well-read and literate residents of Massachusetts in her day, man or woman. A playwright and a historian, an eloquent essayist and inveterate letter writer, she was one of the loudest voices speaking out against the failures and perceived tyranny of British government in Massachusetts and the other colonies.

A long time friend to both Abigail and John Adams, she broke with her dear friend over the creation of the U.S. Constitution, which she opposed as a violation of the ideals she and Adams were strong advocates for during the Revolution:

In the face of Adams’s wrath, Warren stood firm. “It is not in the design of my historic work to write a panegyric on your life and character, though fully sensible of your virtues and your services,” she stated flatly. She observed that she had also said several favorable things (Adams was “endowed with a comprehensive genius” and “actuated by the principles of integrity”; he was also a man with “unimpeachable . . . habits of morality, decency, and religion”), but she refused to bend on political matters. Still, Adams continued his assault, writing additional letters before she had answered the previous one. Finally she just cut him off:

The lines with which you concluded your late correspondence cap the climax of rancor, indecency, and vulgarism. Yet, as an old friend, I pity you; as a Christian, I forgive you; but there must be some acknowledgment of your injurious treatment or some advances to conciliation, to which my mind is ever open, before I can again feel that respect and affection toward Mr. Adams which once existed in the bosom of MERCY WARREN.

 Indeed, she was one of those Anti-Federalists who wrote in response to the Federalist Papers; using the nom de plume ‘A Columbian Patriot’, she wrote powerfully on perceived flaws in the new Constitution, and as herself to her dear friend John Adams on how he had so betrayed what they fought for. Sadly, her relationship with the Adams family never truly recovered.

You can learn more about this fascinating woman through the National Woman’s Hall of Fame. 

Grab the Powerpoint slide featured in this post: Mercy Otis Warren AFM

Bridge Alliance Welcomes New Staff and Roles

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Exciting news! Our friends and member organization, the Bridge Alliance and Bridge Alliance Education Fund are pleased to welcome the addition of Reverend F. Willis Johnson as Vice President, Maria Yuan CEO of IssueVoter and Manu Meel CEO of BridgeUSA, as crucial parts of their board. NCDD is looking forward to continuing to support all the important work Bridge Alliance accomplishes with the updates in staff and structure. This announcement was sent to the NCDD team via the BA Updates newsletter, which you can sign up for here. Read below for a detailed list of all latest changes.

Changes in Bridge Alliance Leadership and Staff Updates

The Bridge Alliance and Bridge Alliance Education Fund are excited to announce the addition of Reverend F. Willis Johnson to its leadership team as Vice President of Partnerships and Programming. He rose to national prominence for his role in healing the Ferguson, MO community after the death of Michael Brown.

We are also proud to announce the additions of Maria Yuan and Manu Meel to the Bridge Alliance Board of Directors. Maria and Manu are two of the most accomplished, young leaders in the healthy self-governance movement. Maria serves as the CEO of IssueVoter, which is a tool to help voters understand where their representatives stand on the issues that are most important to them. Manu is the CEO of BridgeUSA, which develops youth leadership and encourages productive, cross-partisan conversations on campuses across the country. We are excited to bring their voices and perspectives to the Board.

Finally, we would like to announce new leadership and staff titles. These new titles are meant to better reflect the roles and responsibilities of each staffer, rather than to indicate a change in operations.

Board Leadership

David Nevins – Chairman of the Board

Debilyn Molineaux – President

F. Willis Johnson – Vice President of Partnerships and Programming

Staff Leadership

Debilyn Molineaux – CEO

Jeremy Garson – Chief of Staff

Shakira Mills – Deputy Chief of Staff

Support Staff

Dakota Doney – Social Media Manager

Sara Miller – Communications Associate

Wesley Chen – Democracy Intern

Founders Month: Sons of Liberty

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Check out the National Constitution Center’s biographies of the Founding Fathers! https://constitutioncenter.org/learn/educational-resources/founding-fathers

It’s Founders Month here in Florida! According to the Florida Department of Education,

Section (s.) 683.1455, Florida Statutes (F.S.), designates the month of September as American Founders‘ Month and s. 1003.421, F.S., recognizes the last full week of classes in September in public schools as Celebrate Freedom Week.

So what does this mean for our schools and kids and teachers? Basically, it’s time to do some learning about the men and women who have helped shape this state and this country. Here on our Florida Citizens blog, we’ll be doing posts with a brief overview of a particular Founder, Framer, thinker, or shaper of this nation and how they made an impact.
Sept 14 Sons of Liberty

Let’s look at the Sons of Liberty. The Sons of Liberty were a sometimes controversial secret society devoted to combating what it perceived as British oppression by any means necessary.

While they may be most famous for organizing boycotts of British goods and dumping tea into Boston Harbor, they also took sometimes-violent action against people seen as serving British interests. We all recall, for example, those images from the era that illustrate Sons of Liberty tarring and feathering British tax collectors.Philip_Dawe_(attributed),_The_Bostonians_Paying_the_Excise-man,_or_Tarring_and_Feathering_(1774)_-_02

The Bostonian Paying the Excise-Man, 1774 British propaganda print, referring to the tarring and feathering, of Boston Commissioner of Customs John Malcolm four weeks after the Boston Tea Party. The men also poured hot tea down Malcolm’s throat.

The Sons of Liberty were sometimes extreme in their pursuit of liberty; was that extremism always justified? How can we really say, from our own vantage point today? What a fascinating discussion we can have! You can learn more about the fascinating Sons of Liberty and its role in the Boston Tea Party from the Massachusetts Historical Society. 

Grab the PowerPoint slide featured in this post: Sons of Liberty AFM

Resources for Freedom Week!

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Here in Florida, we are required by state statute to teach about the important documents of this country during Freedom Week at the end of September. This is in addition to what is expected for Constitution Day. The Florida Joint Center for Citizenship at the Lou Frey Institute has a number of lessons that target grades 2-12 that can be connected to Freedom Week and Constitution Day!   You do, of course, need to register on our main site in order to access these new free resources. You can visit each lesson directly from the links below. Each one is intended to give students some hands on experience with primary sources and everything you need for instruction is provided for you (though you do need to use your own technology!). These were developed in collaboration with the wonderful folks at the National Archives’ Center for Legislative Archives and currently practicing K-12 educators.

Thinking Through Timelines: Inching Toward Independence

A Short Activity for Second Grade

Question: Why do we celebrate Independence Day?

Thinking Through Timelines: Creating the Constitution

A Short Activity for Third Grade

Question: Why do we celebrate Constitution Day?

Guidance on Government: State Edition

A Short Activity for Fourth Grade

Question: How does the Florida Constitution organize the government?

Guidance on Government: Federal Edition

A Short Activity for Fifth Grade

Question: How does the U.S. Constitution organize the government?

Decoding the Declaration, Celebrate Freedom Week Part I

A Short Activity for High School and Middle School

Question: What did declaring independence say about the importance of rights?

Intentions for Independence, Celebrate Freedom Week Part II

A Short Activity for High School and Middle School

Question: Were the colonists justified in declaring independence?

Rhetoric of Revolution, Celebrate Freedom Week Part III

A Short Activity for High School and Middle School

Question: How does language intensify the message of the Declaration of Independence?

Forward to the Future, Celebrate Freedom Week Part IV

A Short Activity for High School and Middle School

Question: How are the ideas from the Declaration of Independence connected to our government today?

Arguing Arkansas: Analyzing the Impact of Eisenhower’s Little Rock Speech

A short activity for High School U.S. History and U.S. Government Courses

Question: How did civil rights conflicts affect American society during the Eisenhower era?

Pestering With a Purpose: Arguing Women’s Right to Vote

A Short Activity for the U.S. Government Course

Question: How is this document an illustration of civic and political participation?

Suffering Through Suffrage: Arguing Women’s Right to Vote

A Short Activity for the U.S. History Course

Question: Why do the authors oppose woman suffrage?

In addition to our original lessons, we have also created lessons that feature the work of legendary cartoonist Clifford Berryman! These are intended to be used at the 6-12 level. 

Anyone Home?

A Short Activity for High School and Middle School

Question: How does this political cartoon illustrate the lawmaking process?

Picturing Separation of Powers

A Short Activity for High School and Middle School

Question: How do the political cartoons relate to the concept of separation of powers?

Suiting Up

A Short Activity for High School and Middle School

Question: How does this political cartoon illustrate the concept of checks and balances?

Big Civics Ideas Through Political Cartoons

A Short Activity for Middle School Civics

Question: How do the political cartoons illustrate big civics ideas?

These are just some of the resources available on our Students Investigating Primary Sources page. All of these are in addition to our Civics in Real Life resources, many of which address concepts issues that have been around since the Founding. And don’t forget Civics360 for all of your civics content needs!

make the Supreme Court much bigger

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The Supreme Court of Spain has 79 judges. The Federal Constitutional Court of Germany has 16 members. The Constitutional Court of Italy has 15, but Italy is like many countries that also has a final appeals court for regular cases, and that tribunal is staffed by 350 judges.

I mention these examples in the context of arguments for “packing” our Supreme Court. Franklin Roosevelt’s effort to expand the court is usually presented as an example of executive overreach and a partisan ploy that backfired. But the problem with the current court is now critical.

Who would imagine that the following system could work? 1) One court has final jurisdiction over many fundamental issues that confront the society. 2) The public is divided over those issues. 3) There are two political parties, which hold incompatible views on those issues. 4) Justices appointed by each party regularly and predictably vote to decide cases in line with their respective party’s position. 5) Justices serve for life terms. 6) The president can nominate anyone he wants to be a justice. 7) A majority of the Senate must confirm. 8) The president and the Senate may be controlled by the same or by different parties.

Once those eight conditions are in place, it’s more or less inevitable that presidents will be unable to replace Supreme Court vacancies unless their party controls the Senate, but when it does, they will be able to confirm virtually anyone they like to a life term. The defeats of Bork and Garland simply reflected opposition parties making rational decisions in the system they were given, and we should expect tit-for-tat from now on.

As I showed in a previous post, there have been periods when Supreme Court nominations have been uncontroversial. Those have been times of bipartisan elite consensus about constitutional questions. When that consensus has broken down, confirmations have been deeply contentious and the outcomes have been determined, to a large extent, by the luck of who controls which branch at which time.

If I could wave a magic wand, I would establish staggered terms for Supreme Court justices so that replacements become frequent. The stakes of each nomination would fall, and every president would be expected to have a strong but temporary impact on the court–as presidents influence the FCC. But this reform would require a constitutional amendment, since Article III, Sec. 1 decrees life terms.

An alternative is to change the number of justices. That is constitutional, since the number is set by a statute. But I’d change it a lot–to something like 25. Then turnover would be frequent, and the stakes of each appointment would be fairly low. I’d complement that change with a Senate rule that allows nominations to go through unless blocked by a super-majority.

In a large court, most cases are assigned to smaller panels–sometimes by lottery. There are reasonable processes for doing that. A larger court also has a much better chance of representing the diversity of the American people.

Letting the next president name 16 new justices seems a bit much (even if that president’s name turns out to be Joe), so I’d increase the size of the court by one seat every year for the next 16 years.

See also: reforms for a broken Supreme Court;  is our constitutional order doomed?, are we seeing the fatal flaw of a presidential constitution?,  two perspectives on our political paralysis,  and the changing norms for Supreme Court nominations.