Leftists in Washington, when President Donald Trump was in office, fretted that his three Supreme Court nominees would not do what they wanted when liberal agenda points were brought up to the court.
Sen. Chuck Schumer openly threatened several of the judges, by name.
So when Joe Biden took office, they immediately insisted on changes that largely revolved around court-packing, or simply adding enough liberal activists to the bench to assure them of leftist high court decisions going forward.
Biden responded with an order for a special commission to review what could be done.
But that committee now has released a report showing there’s “profound disagreement” over the issue, leaving the future of the agenda in doubt.
The Washington Examiner said a vote was scheduled Tuesday to decide whether to forward the assessment to Biden.
But the chief of First Liberty Institute, Kelly Shackelford, pointed out in a statement that the American public has rejected “court-packing” or “any other attempt to destabilize the judiciary.”
The Examiner reported the commission’s report includes hundreds of pages of court modification ideas, such as term limits or excluding certain topics from court jurisdiction, in addition to court-packing.
Democrats have argued that President Trump’s nominees actually undermined the democratic system, even though the nominations and Senate approval followed strict constitutional requirements.
Critics of the move by Democrats point out the horrible precedent it would set, in that any political administration unhappy with the court’s precedents could simply insist on adding more judges until its side had a majority.
The Examiner noted,” The imminent report to the president also comes after the Supreme Court recently heard arguments over two controversial abortion laws in Texas and Mississippi.”
Shackelford noted the commission originally was supposed to review court-packing, but moved beyond that, considering a long list of additional issues.
“The American public reject court-packing and any other attempt to destabilize the judiciary,” Shackelford said. “Even after numerous polls show Americans reject court-packing, far-left progressives are clearly trying to expand their political power under the guise of ‘court-reform.’ Expanding the membership of the United States Supreme Court is nothing more than a transparent, partisan scheme to achieve purely political objectives and exercise raw power that must be rejected.”
He noted the draft report states, “Although there is widespread agreement among legal scholars that Congress has the constitutional authority to expand the court’s size, there is profound disagreement over whether court expansion at this moment in time would be wise.”
The Democrat-led report charges that appointing a bunch of new justices, all left-leaning, could help “restore the balance on the court that was disrupted by significant norm violations in the confirmation process,” even though the appointments by President Trump followed all the constitutional requirements.
But even the report by the committee admitted the move would threaten judicial independence, and could “undermine or destroy the Supreme Court’s legitimacy.”
Shackelford noted a recent polling found 65% of American voters oppose court-packing. Sixty-six percent of American reject changing the format of the court at all. The Washington Examiner, in June, reported that a supermajority (69%) of voters reject any proposed court reform measure requiring a constitutional amendment.
WND reported just before the 2020 election that a longtime liberal legal scholar, Jonathan Turley, warned to change the makeup of the court “would destroy” it.
He said, “Voters should know if Biden would consider such an irresponsible act, particularly when he previously denounced it.”
Biden repeatedly refused to express an opinion on the issue during the campaign.
Turley confirmed the Trump administration followed the Constitution precisely in its nominations – all of which were approved by the Senate.
He warned a packing scheme “would change the court for the sole purpose of securing an ideological majority.”
“It would create a new and fundamentally flawed court — a sad reflection of our age of rage,” Turley said.
Among issues the commission reviewed were term limits, adding judges to the bench, a new code of conduct, live-streaming and more.
The chief of a left-leaning organization, Meagan Hatcher-Mays, complained that the commission wouldn’t immediately recommend adding liberal judges.
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