Hundreds of thousands of Americans have told Joe Biden’s hand-picked committee working on ways to pack the U.S. Supreme Court to give more favorable decisions to progressives to back off.
“Court-packing is a horrible, dangerous idea that Americans view as an act of pure political revenge, threatening our courts and the civil liberties of all Americans,” explained Kelly Shackelford, the president of First Liberty Institute who wrote the comment which more than 400,000 signed.
“An independent judiciary is an essential check on the power of the executive and legislative branches and the fleeting political whims of the culture that preserves our constitutional republic,” he said.
The organization now has confirmed it has turned over its public comment to the Presidential Commission on the Supreme Court of the United States on behalf of 402,537 who signed it.
It was endorsed at its outset by the likes of Attorney General Ed Meese, Rev. Franklin Graham, Brent William Gardner, Jenny Beth Martin, Bishop E.W. Jackson, Penny Nance and Daniel Garza.
It warns that the court-packing scheme being pursued by Biden, who was prompted by leftists in the Congress and elsewhere to try to skew the court’s decisions by adding a team of liberals, is a threat to religious liberty and judicial independence.
The letter explained, “The current progressive legal-political movement now seeks to effectuate a seizure of our courts under the specious guise of ‘reforming’ the judiciary. Whether by packing the court with additional justices, stripping the Supreme Court of jurisdiction, or otherwise undermining the constitutional notion of separation of powers, the goal is the same: replacing the Constitution’s original meaning with one that reflects a progressive secularism. The current effort in support of ‘court reform’ poses the utmost risk of subverting our freedoms and constitutional democracy.”
The Senate Judiciary Committee itself, the last time the move was considered, in 1937, called it an “utterly dangerous abandonment of constitutional principle.”
Twisting the court into a partisan assembly would make it “a political tool of the executive and legislative branches used to crush the freedom of all Americans,” the comment warned.
That’s especially true since the current agenda points are “transparent, partisan plots designed to achieve purely political objectives through the use of raw power,” it warned.
The letter explained today the leftists in government see judges who rule on constitutional questions based on the “original public meaning” as obstacles to changing the nation into a socialist state.
“The political opposition to the nomination of Justice Amy Coney Barrett provides an apt example. In the minds of progressives, Judge Barrett and other judicial nominees in recent experience who adhere to the tenets of originalism are viewed with suspicion and met with cynicism. Their qualifications for office are questioned based on little or no substance. The animus so often expressed toward originalist judges is often accompanied by a promotion of an aggressive reading of the Constitution as a living document, an interpretive model which curtails historic rights while creating novel privileges, often at great cost to life and liberty. Should the far Left seize control of the federal courts, the constitutional rights we cherish as Americans—from religious freedom to economic freedom, from states’ rights to freedom of expression—would be in jeopardy,” the letter warned.
The letter also notes that 64% of Americans oppose adding more justices to the Supreme Court, and even more oppose amending the Constitution to reduce the independence and authority.
Instead, the commission should be studying “congressional reforms,” the letter notes.
Other signers included James Dobson, L. Brent Bozell, Tim Wildmon, Tony Perkins and Star Parker.
Biden created the commission to study the courts by executive order earlier this year.
Paul Bedard wrote in his column at the Washington Examiner that the idea of court-packing already was losing at the polls.
The comment continues, “Given such resounding trust for the Supreme Court and the judicial system, the sobering examples of other nations, and the enormous risk to our constitutional freedoms and democratic structure, partisan court reforms would be a mistake of historic proportions. As the 1937 ‘Report on the Reorganization of the Federal Judiciary’ issued by the U.S. Senate Judiciary Committee concluded, court-packing’s ‘ultimate operation would be to make this government one of men rather than one of law.’ Then, as now, politically motivated court reforms lack historic precedent and legitimacy. Now is the time for staunch, bipartisan opposition to any plan that would subject the Supreme Court to a deeply politicized and damaging packing scheme.”
Biden’s commission is the result of progressive and Marxist activists who were enraged that President Trump appointed three justices to the bench during his term his office.
That result, in theory, has shifted the focus of the court to a more conservative approach to interpreting American law, but very few decisions are announced along strict 6-3 ideology.
Leftists are especially alarmed by the fact that the court agreed to review abortion in a new case involving a law out of Mississippi, which is seen as an opportunity to pull back from the 1973 Roe v. Wade ruling that created a right to abortion out of the “emanations” and the “penumbra” of the Constitution.
If that happens, abortion rules would be set then by the individual states.
But Democrats have, in recent months, threatened even individual Supreme Court justices if their decisions do not toe the Democrat Party agenda.
The result is a widespread expectation that the commission picked by Biden will recommend changes that include adding “liberal” judges to the court to “balance” conservatives there, imposing term limits, or other options.
The message being assembled, which Americans are being asked to sign, is available at Supremecoup.com and will be online until September 15.
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