MEMO: A Statutory Measure Expanding Lower Federal Courts Meets the Byrd Rule’s ‘Merely Incidental’ Standard
Yale Law School professor Samuel Moyn and Take Back The Court director Aaron Belkin sent a memo to Senate leaders, laying out a clear legal case that lower court expansion satisfies the ‘merely incidental’ standard of the Byrd Rule, the highest hurdle to clear in the budget reconciliation process.
“A measure expanding lower federal courts by 250 judges can be enacted through the budget reconciliation process, which is not subject to the filibuster, and which needs only a simple 51-vote majority to pass the Senate,” said Moyn and Belkin.
To:
Senator Chuck Schumer, Majority Leader, U.S. Senate
Senator Dick Durbin, Democratic Whip, U.S. Senate
Senator Bernie Sanders, Chair, Committee on the Budget, U.S. Senate
From:
Professor Samuel Moyn
Henry R. Luce Professor of Jurisprudence at Yale Law School and Professor of History, Yale University
Aaron Belkin
Director, Take Back the Court
Re: A Statutory Measure Expanding Lower Federal Courts Meets the Byrd Rule’s ‘Merely Incidental’ Standard
