Just when you thought the push for radical court “reform” had gone away, the Far Left is once again insisting on expanding the U.S. Supreme Court. Ahead of the November midterm elections, they’re laying the groundwork for a Supreme Court Coup should they regain political power.
In response to the Supreme Court’s recent decision on redistricting, former presidential candidate Kamala Harris called for “Supreme Court reform, including the notion of expanding the court” during a call with a Left-leaning nonprofit, Emerge.
“The truly radical project of court-packing is fast becoming a mainstream view, if not a litmus test, on the Left,” explains Guy Benson at the Washington Examiner. “Lawmakers with presidential ambitions are demanding ‘reforms’ to the Supreme Court, with several openly calling for the addition of four seats.”
“It’s a dangerous thing, a dangerous gambit,” said U.S. House Speaker Mike Johnson in response to Harris’s remarks. “You don’t just blow up the system when you lose.”
“For the former vice president of the United States and a candidate for president to suggest that you should pack the Supreme Court or destroy these institutions because they lost is, I just think, outrageous,” Johnson added.
For years, activists have put forward radical proposals that would destroy judicial independence and the constitutional order. They have poured millions of dollars into trying to convince the public that their changes would “fix” the Court.
The list of bad ideas includes court-packing, ending life tenure for federal judges, and giving Congress the power to oversee the Court’s ethics code. Some have proposed keeping the justices from hearing certain cases, effectively destroying the Court’s power of judicial review.
They also launched a wave of attacks against the conservative justices. They fabricated “ethics” scandals aimed at making Americans hallucinate misconduct. This line of attack was designed to smear the credibility of the justices and undermine the authority of their rulings. It’s clear what this is really about: destroying public trust in the Supreme Court.
During President Biden’s administration, there was a major push to pack the Court, an effort that didn’t have anything to do with improving our judicial system. It was all about power and control.
“Court packing would not simply alter the structure of the Supreme Court — it would convert it into a subsidiary of the other branches, destroying our constitutional order,” explained First Liberty Executive General Counsel Hiram Sasser.
“Americans don’t want their Constitution destroyed,” writes attorney and Yale Law School professor Jed Rubenfeld. “Polls consistently show that 54 percent to 58 percent of Americans oppose court-packing.”
“The whole point of constitutional law is to have one branch of government, headed by the Supreme Court, that can stand against majority will when it violates the nation’s fundamental law,” he added. “The point of court-packing is the opposite: to create a Supreme Court that won’t stand in the way of majority will. In other words, court-packing is a wrecking ball to demolish the Constitution itself.”
Fighting for religious freedom is meaningless if the courts are politicized and turned into an extension of whoever holds power. First Liberty will do everything we can to protect judicial independence and the integrity of the courts.