After suffering criticism for not having any policies, Mayor Buttigieg last week released several including one which would see the Supreme courts numbers increased from 9 to 15 in attempt to ‘depoliticise’ the supreme court. While his solution has issues, both constitutional and pragmatic, he should be applauded for beginning a much needed conversation.

He proposes that the court be made up of 5 Democratic Justices, 5 Republican Justices and five non-partisan Justices who are chosen by the other 10 and only serve limited terms.

The aim would be to create a court which based its decisions on points of law rather than their own political leanings. The most obvious example of this recently was the decision to legalise same sex marriage. On that decision the court split strait down the middle, with the conservatives voting ‘No’ and the progressives voting ‘Yes’ leaving the swing vote with the only real moderate on the court at the time in Kennedy.

Now the issue here is not the result of the vote but the fact that it split so politically. You would hope that the highest judicial officials in the land could put aside their own biases and come to some agreement on what was constitutionally correct as opposed to what they individually wanted but in this case and numerous others that blatantly wasn’t the case.

While several Democrats have lamented the current conservative leanings of the Supreme Court, Buttigieg is the first to try and tackle the issue from a bi-partisan angle, rather than simply focusing on how to make the court more progressive in the short term. Buttigieg’s approach at least appears to have the nations best interest at heart rather than simply the interests of the Democratic Party.

If Hillary had won in 2016 I doubt that the make up of the supreme court would even be an issue for most Democrats because the court would already be leaning progressive. It would be the Republicans calling for reform and claiming that the democrats were using the court as a political plaything. It is this reality which makes bi-partisan reform so crucial.

The Supreme Court and it’s Justices should not be something parties support or don’t support based on its current political leanings. Nor should reform be something which is proposed purely for partisan gain as such reforms are likely to only make the problem worse.

Take for example the proposal to simply appoint new justices and take advantage of the fact that there is no stipulation in the constitution about how many there should be. While a Democratic President may appoint two more to balance the court, there is nothing to stop the next Republican from doing the same. This would lead to even more partisan judicial appointments and potentially a farcical large bench with no real authority.

On the contrary, support for the Supreme court should be unconditional and proposals for reform based on what would actually make a more fair, less political court. That’s why Buttigieg’s proposal is so refreshing.

Like I said above the Mayor’s proposal has its issues. For example how does one tell if a judge is Republican or Democrat and do we really want to be encouraging judges on lower courts to pick a side. Also do we really want to give enshrined power to political parties who are never mentioned in the constitution? And this is before we even get to the constitutional issues of which their are many.

Never the less we have to start somewhere and Mayor Buttigieg hasn’t done any harm to his campaign by showing he is prepared to reach across the isle to find bi-partisan solutions. In fact, in an election campaign where winning over independent voters will be crucial, the ability to do so could become a crucial advantage.