and why didn't the Founders provide guidance on the # of Justice's?
Just a couple comments, if they fall within my remaining half cup of coffee:
In short, my view, is that it is just another aspect of the Founders failing to see (or rather being aghast that some things would be allowed) the explosion of judicial power and thus did not foresee the need to micro-manage certain areas.
The founders did a crackerjack job in some areas of judicial power -including limits- but it tended to be focused on areas where they had been abused by King George and his judges. Thus when they thought about judicial power they thought about and focused on abuses of search and seizure, right to confront witnesses, double jeopardy, habeus corpus, etc.
At the same time they were pretty confident that the legislative branches of government were being vested with all the important powers (unless specifically assigned to the president.) and it was their view that they very intentionally were making the judiciary the weakest of the three branches so they were not to be feared nor could they become controlling. In the federalist papers, Hamilton, among others emphasized that there was not much that the judiciary could do because they did not have the power of the purse, did not have any control over the military, or command any law enforcement entities. And if they got rowdy, the legislative branch would just over-ride them.
So much for that expectation. The rest is history. In no way did they envision and environment where the president and congress would be feverishly watching the court for their approval on everything and anything day in and day out. They did allow that the court might jump in on truly egregious matters where congress or the president had gone off the reservation in ways that could not be remedied by the people electing someone else. The power of the judiciary increased very early and exponentially when Marbury v. Madison became the law of the land - ie. the case that first ruled that the Supreme Court could overturn an Act of Congress and has just grown like kudzu since.
Anyway, roundabout answer to why - in my mind- they did not focus on some of the details of the structure of the Supreme Court. They thought that they had designed a constitutional system where the Court would be the least powerful rather than the most powerful so they did not lean into some areas. It happens. As with the electoral college. For a long time it was not an issue for normal people. But knowing now how people will try to dick with it, they might have locked some things down more tightly.
In regard to Joe trying to pack the court, I doubt it. That always gets messy everytime it is tried or talked about. Creates a lot of heat but no clear winners so it goes away with the party proposing it just looking like political hacks.
More likely they would sneak up on it a bit by proposing terms limits or age limits which might even get bipartisan support especially if it only applies to future judges not current justices. Ironically, Demented Joe and Ruthie might be examples of why their would be support for that.
The dems would pack the court if they could without having to take the heat. Unfortunately they do not know how to do that. Not to beat this to death, but most of the action is at the lower courts which serve as gateways or roadblocks for cases, and Obama left 170 lower court positions open which Trump is filling. You would think that if they had a real boner for having more judicial power they would have taken care of bidness.
