The most dangerous political idea of our lifetime is being sold to Americans as “reform.”
But this time, it’s a smokescreen with nothing to do with actual reform and everything to do with power and political revenge.
“Court reform is critical to our democracy,” declared President Joe Biden in his address to the nation in late July as he stepped aside from seeking a second term while moving full speed ahead with a dangerous plan that would pave the way for the far left’s radical agenda. In truth, “court reform” is nothing more than a desperate attack to subvert the legitimacy of the U.S. Supreme Court and rewrite our Constitution.
The driving motivation for most angry court reform advocates comes down to a few Supreme Court decisions that didn’t go their way, namely the originalist decisions in Dobbs v. Jackson, which overturned Roe v. Wade, and Trump v. United States regarding presidential immunity. The over-the-top counterattack is to pack the court with partisan justices to control outcomes to their liking. It’s a perilous, short-sighted move that would destroy constitutional order and threaten civil liberties, all under the guise of “saving democracy.”
It’s a dangerous proposal, but it’s not the first time a president has sought to exercise raw power over a separate but equal branch of government to manipulate the high court to suit political ends.
In 1937, Democrats in President Franklin D. Roosevelt’s own party rebuffed various reforms he proposed under the magnanimous title, “Reorganization of the Federal Judiciary.” He attempted to add justices to the high court after several of his New Deal initiatives were struck down. The Senate Judiciary Committee labeled Roosevelt’s efforts a “needless, futile, and utterly dangerous abandonment of constitutional principle.”
By thwarting Roosevelt’s political power grab, the 75th Congress hoped subsequent generations would inherit “an independent Court, a fearless Court, a Court that will dare to announce its honest opinions in what it believes to be the defense of the liberties of the people” rather than a court acting “out of fear or sense of obligation.”
Roosevelt’s court reform proposals were never approved or implemented, and public opinion was mobilized against it. But here we are 87 years later staring at the same proposals with a fresh coat of paint.
Before the 2020 election, Joe Biden stated in an interview, “The last thing we need to do is turn the Supreme Court into just a political football,” making light of the notion that he would propose changes to the high court. But shortly after taking residence in the Oval Office, the Biden-Harris administration assembled a 34-member commission, a “bipartisan group of constitutional scholars,” to review multiple options to change the court by adding seats, inserting ethics guidelines, and establishing term limits — all because in Biden’s words, the court was “out of whack.”
Others have jumped on the bandwagon in the multi-faceted effort to destabilize the judiciary. One liberal donor is spending $30 million supporting the court reform agenda. Demand Justice, an organization pushing for radical court reform, including court packing, says that change is desperately needed and claims the court’s decisions are “badly out-of-touch with the views of the majority of Americans prove that the Supreme Court and judiciary as a whole must be updated to reflect modern life and modern values.”
Not surprisingly, Brian Fallon, the founder of Demand Justice, left the organization to take a leadership role in campaign communications for Democratic nominee, Kamala Harris. Harris herself has endorsed the concept of court reform, going so far as to previously say that she was “absolutely open” to court packing.
Many others are calling for court packing — a concentrated effort to stuff the court with enough justices to tip the scale in favor of a radical judicial philosophy. As many as 130 different progressive groups have united to remake the court by adding four justices to the Supreme Court and 200 lower court judges.
This dangerous agenda isn’t going away anytime soon.
While some of the ideas are more subtle than simply packing the court, they all violate the Constitution’s principles of separation of powers and the independence of the judiciary.
The push for term limits is a not-so-subtle political partisanship effort to remove the longest-serving and most conservative Justices — Clarence Thomas, John Roberts, and Samuel Alito. It is unconstitutional and a bad idea. Our Founders said lifetime tenure was required, to avoid the political influence on our Justices.
Another proposal, ethics reform, on the surface sounds like a noble idea. But upon close inspection, it isn’t about accountability, transparency, or any other euphemism. It is about giving enemies of the judiciary the power to punish justices by unleashing an unrelenting onslaught of frivolous investigations and fabricated scandals. Judges must be able to make decisions without fear of partisan retribution from the executive or legislative branches. And the courts have had their own rules of ethics in place for many decades.
What the banner-waving court reform advocates fail to mention in their passion-filled campaigns is the reasonable level of consensus in the court’s annual docket. In the Court’s most recent 2023-2024 term, of the 70 cases argued 27 resulted in unanimous, 9-0 decisions. Only 11 of the Court’s 6-3 decisions represented what would be considered an ideological split. All the other opinions of the court displayed a balanced mixture of justices from both ideological perspectives. With those results, it’s difficult to make a case that the court is unbalanced and committed to interpreting the Constitution from a conservative, ideological perspective.
The fact remains that the Court reform movement is simply political revenge. A majority of the Court generally follows the text of the Constitution, and it drives liberals nuts. The meaning of the Constitutional text does not change according to modern values, but those advocating a living Constitution need it to change to accomplish their agenda. There is only a true, original meaning of the text or a false and “new” meaning of the text. It is an originalist view of the Constitution that has led the Court to reverse Roe v. Wade and restore the First Amendment’s protection of religious liberty in cases like Kennedy v. Bremerton School District.
Unless jurists follow the text, our civil liberties will be wiped out.
The rule of law is not a guarantee. Attacking or destroying the independence of the judiciary would end one of the most precious gifts all Americans have — their civil liberties. Court reform is quite simply a euphemism for hyper-partisan efforts to end the independent judiciary.
Americans aren’t buying what liberals are selling. Recent polling commissioned by First Liberty Institute reveals that 87% of Americans believe an independent judiciary is a crucial safeguard of our civil liberties, and 57% believe that Congress forcing ethics reform on the Supreme Court threatens that independence.
Nearly three-quarters (72%) of Americans believe the politicization of the Supreme Court threatens judicial independence, and 59% oppose court-packing.
Every country that has orchestrated this kind of judicial coup has seen the rule of law destroyed. One need look no further than Venezuela, which enjoyed a democratic government but, once the judiciary was politicized and lost its independence, the country fell into complete chaos. When the judiciary is no longer a separate branch, it becomes a nefarious weapon of the political party in power. Americans must understand that what happened in Venezuela could happen in the U.S.
Americans clearly understand that the independence of the judiciary is critical to their freedoms and that politically motivated so-called ‘reform’ threatens judicial independence. Any attempted power grab by Congress to control the Supreme Court would put all our freedoms in jeopardy. Despite the relentless attacks by the left, Americans want Congress to mind its own business and leave the courts alone.
An independent judiciary is the last safeguard of our civil liberties and an essential check on the power of the executive and legislative branches and the fleeting political whims of the culture. Those who care about their freedoms must stand up and speak up against this attempted coup for all Americans today and future generations.