From the historic campus of Hillsdale College in Hillsdale, Michigan, where the good, the true, and the beautiful are taught, nurtured, and honored, this is the Radio Free Hillsdale Hour, bringing the activity and education of the college to listeners across the country.

Now it's going to be patently obvious that every time a new president and new Congress comes in, they can really add judges to get the outcomes they want.

At that point, you no longer have an independent judiciary, and you really fundamentally change the whole nature of the American constitutional system.

This is your host, Scott Bertrand, and that's Dr. Matthew Spalding, our first guest on today's program.

Dr. Spalding is Vice President of Washington Operations and Dean of the Van Andal Graduate School of Government at Hillsdale College.

We talked at length with Dr. Spalding about his

recent piece at Real Clear Policy about court packing ideas on the left. Dr. Spalding, thanks for

joining us. Good to be with you, Scott. We point listeners to your recent piece at Real Clear Policy.com.

Joe Biden's not-so-secret plan to restructure the Supreme Court.

Now, there seems to be some intentional confusion on behalf of some out there to sort of muddy the

waters on what court packing actually means. What is the agreed-upon definition of court packing?

You're right.

The reason I did the article was this is kind of keeps coming up,

and they've tried to get him kind of an answer on court packing, and the terms seem to be

getting blurred here.

So the historic model, the actual thing will use the rates for court packing comes from the

idea of adding members to the Supreme Court, court packing, meaning we're going to add members of the Supreme Court

in a way that allows the person making appointments, name of the president, to change the

balance on the Supreme Court. This is what Franklin Roosevelt tried to do in 1937, where the term

really comes from. But under the Constitution, the Congress, by law, which means

the president would have to sign on to it, but by law through normal legislation,

Congress can expand the numbers on the Supreme Court. The number nine is not in the Constitution.

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