Off The Editor’s Desk – 4-21-2021
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Packing the Supreme Court?
Last week three liberal congressional members of the Democratic Party unveiled a plan to increase the number of justices on the United States Supreme Court from nine to 13. Republicans are calling the proposal “court packing” and there is probably very little chance that it will happen as Speaker of The House, Nancy Pelosi has indicated that she has “no plans to bring it to the floor.”
Senator John Kennedy, the Democratic turned Republican senator from Louisiana put the proposal this way. “President Biden wants to pack the Supreme Court like a can of tuna.
“At this point, I can’t tell if the president really believes all this silliness or if he is just trying to appease the ‘Wokers,’ but I can tell you they want to pack the Supreme Court with more socialists than a sophomore gender studies class,” said Kennedy.
According to an article from NPR, a non-profit media, wrote: “At issue is the make up of the Supreme Court, where conservatives now have a six to three majority. Democrats and liberal activists say this ensures the high court will strike down almost any legal challenge to the Biden administration’s legislative priorities.”
According to NPR “Progressive groups remain enraged at what they see as Republican manipulation of the Supreme Court nomination process to give former President Donald Trump two appointments to the court: first, by blocking former President Barack Obama’s nominee to the Supreme Court for nearly a year, and then by rushing through Amy Coney Barrett’s nomination just over a month after Ruth Bader Ginsburg’s death. Trump also appointed Brett Kavanaugh following the retirement in 2018 of Anthony Kennedy.”
I was listening to a talk radio program last week and a person on the program, who’s name I did not catch, indicated that had Ginsburg retired several years before she passed, the make up of the court would have been much different today.
Back in 1936, President Franklin D. Roosevelt wanted to add up to six more justices to the Supreme Court in order to obtain favorable rulings regarding his New Deal legislation that the court had ruled unconstitutional.
According to NPR “The bill to expand the size of the Supreme Court is hardly a surprise, given that it’s the only mechanism to charge the court’s composition without a constitutional amendment. Congress has changed the number of justices seven times in the course of U. S. history, but the last time was immediately after the Civil War.
“Some scholars argue that Congress could also pass legislation limiting the number of years a justice could serve, most proposals are for 15 or 18-year terms.” The average length that a justice has served is 16-years.
“But the Constitution says that Supreme Court Justices and other federal judges, ‘shall hold their offices during good behavior,’ and that has long been interpreted to mean they cannot be removed except by impeachment by Congress. Changing that would seem to require a constitutional amendment, which requires approval by two-thirds of the House and Senate, and three-quarters of the states.”
“We are here today because the United States Supreme Court is broken. It is out of balance, and it needs to be fixed.” So said Senator Ed Markey of Massachusetts, one of the co-sponsors of the bill. “Too many Americans view our highest court in the land as a partisan, political institution, not our impartial, judicial branch of government.”
I would agree with the good senator, but it has always been that way, and if you look over the past before the Civil War, the number of justices on the court was changed to suit the political climate of the times. Even FDR wanted to change the number to further his idea of what the country should look like.
Now the Democrats want to change the number to push their liberal agenda upon us.
Thanks for reading! ~Carlton