Suppose that people have been burning the flag of the United States and although this is a freedom of expression that is guaranteed by the First Amendment of the United States Constitution, the President feels this is wrong. The President knows of an upcoming case to the Supreme Court about flag burning and the President feels that in order for his opinion to prevail more Supreme Court justices need to be appointed.

Should the President ask Congress to increase the number of Supreme Court justices so he can appoint additional justices that share his views on flag desecration? I believe that the President should not be allowed to create new seats on the Supreme Court

Adding seats to the Supreme Court upsets the core democratic value of separation of powers, and goes against the fundamental beliefs of liberty and diversity. It upsets separation of powers by giving the Executive Branch power over the Judicial Branch. John Marshall stated at the Virginia Convention in 1830 that, "I have always thought, from my earliest youth till now that the greatest scourge an angry Heaven ever inflicted upon an ungrateful and sinning people, was an ignorant, a corrupt, or a dependent judiciary." Also in 1803 John Marshall told the people in the case of Marbury v. Madison, 5 U.S. 137(1803) that the judiciary must be independent from any influence of the executive branch. Adding justices that share the President's views would be giving undue influence on the judiciary. It would upset liberty because it may not allow the judicial branch to be independent. It also upsets diversity because it would blend the executive branch into the judicial branch.

In 1937 President Franklin Delano Roosevelt tried to bend the Supreme Court to his will. He proposed "whenever a Judge or Justice of any Federal Court has reached the age of seventy and does not avail himself of the opportunity to retire on a pension, a new member shall be appointed by the President then in office, with the approval, as required by the Constitution, of the Senate of the United States." Congress found this proposal unacceptable and refused to pass it. If adding seats to the Supreme Court was not acceptable in 1937, it should not be acceptable in 2003.

I believe that the President should not add new seats to the Supreme Court because that would be contradictory of our own core democratic values, go against the opinions of Congress on previous court packing, and upset our traditional balance of power among the three branches of government