Sen. Susan Collins rejected expanding the Supreme Court after Democrat Troy Jackson said he is open to adding justices because the court “obviously is not working.”
The exchange came during Thursday’s Senate debate, where Jackson went further than ethics talk and put court packing on the table. Collins shut it down. She said the point of the judiciary is independence from politics, not a bigger roster built to change outcomes.
Breitbart News reported the clash as Jackson attacked the court’s ethics, floated term limits, and said he would not oppose adding seats. Collins answered that packing the bench breaks with the constitutional design the founders set for a co-equal branch.
Jackson cast the court as captured. He said lifetime tenure may have made sense once, but not now. He alleged justices take trips and gifts from people who may appear before them. He also claimed the court works for Donald Trump and “the billionaire class,” and that those interests fund figures like Justices Thomas and Alito.
Those charges were Jackson’s. The record does not independently prove the gift, travel, or funding claims. He still used them to justify structural change.
Jackson put it this way:
"I understand why we had Supreme Court that was supposed to be lifetime positions, but look, what we have now is something unbelievable. I mean, people that don’t have any ethics. People that are taking trips, people are taking you know gifts from people that are going to come before them. I mean, this is not I don’t think what our founding fathers expected whenever they set up you know this system. And so yeah, I think first and foremost we have to have real ethics reform that’s accountable that you can hold people do. I think that we should have term limits, and I’m not against putting more people on the court because this court obviously is not working. It’s working at the pass of the Donald Trump and the billionaire class. I mean, that’s who’s actually funding people like Thomas and Alito."
In plain terms, he tied ethics complaints to a power play: more seats if the current nine will not deliver the results he wants.
Collins did not match the rhetoric. She defended the structure. She said Americans need a Supreme Court insulated from politics, as one of three branches in the checks and balances the founders built. Expanding the court to change its direction, she argued, runs against that vision.
She also pointed to her own record. Collins said she is the only Republican senator who voted for Justices Sotomayor, Jackson, and Kagan, three liberal women appointed by Democratic presidents. That, she said, is closer to what the founders wanted: a court that does not operate like Congress.
Collins told the debate:
"What we want is a Supreme Court that is insulated from politics. That was the whole idea of the judicial system, one of the three branches of government, parts of the checks and balances that the founders of this country envisioned. To try to pack the court by increasing the numbers goes completely against the vision of those who wrote the Constitution. I would also point out that I am the only Republican senator who voted for Justice Sotomayor, Justice Jackson, and Justice Kagan. Those three liberal women justices who were appointed by Democratic presidents, and that’s what I think the founders want. They don’t want the Supreme Court to be like Congress."
Her point was simple. Confirmations can cross party lines. Remaking the court’s size to punish a docket you dislike is something else.
The Constitution does not fix the number of justices. Congress does. Lawmakers created a six-member court in 1789. The size changed more than once. In 1869, Congress set membership at nine. It has stayed there.
That history matters. When politicians talk about “adding seats,” they are not restoring a lost constitutional rule. They are asking Congress to redesign the bench after losses at the ballot box and in confirmation fights. Collins treated that as a threat to independence. Jackson treated a court he dislikes as proof the system is broken.
Ethics rules and transparency can be debated on their own. Packing is different. It turns every controversial ruling into a pretext for a new majority. Once that door opens, both parties have a standing invitation to stack the deck the next time they hold power.
Collins drew the line where institutional conservatives usually draw it: protect the court’s insulation first. Jackson’s answer was openness to more justices, term limits, and ethics measures aimed at a bench he said serves Trump and wealthy donors. One approach guards the structure. The other revises it when the votes go the wrong way.
A court that grows every time one side loses stops being a court. It becomes another chamber of Congress with better robes.
