Image 01 Image 03

GOP Plans Constitutional Amendment to Stop Supreme Court Packing

GOP Plans Constitutional Amendment to Stop Supreme Court Packing

If Democrats learned from history, they wouldn’t push to pack the Supreme Court.

https://www.supremecourt.gov/about/justices.aspx

The Democrats have made two areas a focal point in order to get their way: abolish the Electoral College and pack the Supreme Court.

I covered the dangers of eliminating the Electoral College yesterday. Now GOP lawmakers in both chambers want to push a constitutional amendment in order to stop anyone from packing the Supreme Court.

Legislation

A few 2020 Democratic presidential candidates have suggested placing more than nine justices on the Supreme Court: Robert O’Rourke, South Bend Mayor Pete Buttgieg, Sen. Kamala harris, Sen. Elizabeth Warren, and Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand.

Rep. Mark Green (R-TN) will present legislation in the House on Thursday. From The Washington Examiner:

Green, R-Tenn., plans to introduce his legislation Thursday, and it will state that the Supreme Court “shall be composed of nine justices.” It also holds that the court will be reduced to nine justices if Democrats succeed in expanding the number of seats before Green’s amendment is ratified.

“The Congress shall have the power to enforce this article by appropriate legislation,” it adds.

“The temptation to create a Court of super-legislators must be resisted,” Green said Thursday. “Limiting the number of seats to the nine we have currently would help ensure the U.S. Supreme Court remain an impartial branch beholden to the Constitution and no political party.”

Green faces an uphill battle in the House since Democrats have control. He found help in the Republican-controlled Senate as Florida Sen. Marco Rubio wants to propose similar legislation:

“We must prevent further destabilization of essential institutions,” Rubio tweeted. “Court packing is quickly becoming a litmus test for 2020 Democratic candidates. Therefore I will be introducing a constitutional amendment to keep the number of seats on #SCOTUS at 9.”

Rubio also accused the proponents of expanding the court of doing so to advance a political agenda. “Proponents of a Democratic-led court-packing scheme foresee an impending ‘crisis’ – one that they use to justify their highly partisan tactics,” he said.

How About No?

First off, let’s stop giving the Supreme Court so much power. Second, their job is to interpret the Constitution, which has no political leaning. Don’t push a justice to interpret the document based on their personal beliefs. I mean, the amendments in the Constitution have clear and precise language, especially the Bill of Rights.

If you ignore history, you’re bound to repeat it. Cliché, but true. The Democrats have to look back at the mess caused by FDR when he wanted to pack the Supreme Court because God forbid the justices ruled against two of his socialist programs.

Julien Zelizer, history professor at Princeton, wrote in The New York Times last October to remind Democrats of what happened when FDR attempted to pack the Supreme Court:

The president handed conservatives an issue to paint him as a sort of American dictator. “The whole New Deal really went up in smoke as a result of the Supreme Court fight,” said Secretary of Agriculture and future Vice President Henry Wallace. The plan became a key talking point to foment a fierce political backlash against the F.D.R. and the liberal wing of the Democratic Party. One constituent sent a senator a bullet wrapped in a paper that warned, “If you support Roosevelt’s court bill, we will get you — you dirty rubber stamp.”

The court battle was a huge reversal of fortune for Roosevelt. Starting with the 1938 midterm elections, a coalition of Southern Democratic committee chairmen and Republicans came to power. They broke with the president by forming a powerful congressional voting bloc that had the muscle to stifle major initiatives at the high point of the liberal era.

Health care and civil rights legislation, for instance, were two issues that the coalition held hostage. Southern committee chairmen worked with ranking Republicans to prevent legislation from ever reaching the floor. Senator James Eastland of Mississippi joked about special pockets that he had put into his pants to carry around the civil rights bills that he never allowed to come up for a vote. When bills did reach the Senate, the coalition joined forces to filibuster. The columnist William White called the Senate the “South’s unending revenge upon the North for Gettysburg.”

Yes, it will cause a backlash. If it causes the Republicans to get back control of the House and maintain control of the Senate and White House, that means Republicans will be able to choose more of their justices.

Do the Democrats ever think things through? Say they allow court packing. Do they think it will go away if we elect another Republican president?

The editorial board at the Toledo Blade also reminded the Democrats the fiasco over the elimination of “the filibuster for most presidential nominations.” During the votes for Justice Brett Kavanaugh and Justice Neil Gorsuch, I saw many conservatives on Twitter retweeting an old Harry Reid tweet that celebrated the Senate eliminating the filibuster.

Not only is packing the Supreme Court wrong, but Democrats better learn from history or it will come back to bite them in the butt.

DONATE

Donations tax deductible
to the full extent allowed by law.

Comments

I kinda like the idea of DJT promptly nominating however many more Justices the Democrats want.

The Repubs do have the saner approach. Nine is plenty for careful consideration of difficult decisions.

To answer the question, no the liberal candidates do not think anything thru. Many, including liberals, have expressed frustration that the candidates are merely parroting the crazy ideas of the craziest newly elected, who in turn parrot the rantings of far left academia. So we end up with open borders, run-away drug usage, speech crimes, thought crimes, and an economy based on fantasy climate issues, utilizing fantasy energy sources and machinery.

The Democratic Party is a cancer upon America.

Learn from history? I don’t think they are capable of that.

    Sanddog in reply to Virginia42. | March 21, 2019 at 4:43 pm

    They’re incapable of having any interest in anything that happened before the day they were born. To them, history is what has occurred during their lifetime.

    rabidfox in reply to Virginia42. | March 21, 2019 at 7:25 pm

    How can you expect them to learn from something they haven’t read about, let alone studied.

    puhiawa in reply to Virginia42. | March 21, 2019 at 9:41 pm

    History is no longer taught. It a comic book by a communist named Zinn, entirely fictitious, and imitators for history as a whole.

bobinreverse | March 21, 2019 at 1:46 pm

Trump should nominate 100 new supremes tomorrow and tortel should start confirming them on Monday.

Learn from history? That concepts assumes that reality exists and I want to understand what it is. Leftists think that they can define history. That is why they keep pushing socialism when anyone with any knowledge of history knows that it will fail for the masses. Venezuela anyone?

Combine the “The ends justify the means” with “Reality is created not discovered” and you have the arrogant “pack the Supreme Court” and “eliminate the Electoral College” noise.

Another history lesson the dems should study is how the French Revolution ended for some of the supporters who were considered useful idiots by the leaders.

No one has learnt anything it appears. The only real way to stop Democrats being Democrats is to pass laws the forbids them from having anything to do with power.

Yeah, but John Roberts the super genius, assured us that it doesn’t matter who appoints the judges. If that is the case then why is there all of this hysteria?

The claim is that the Constitution shows no political leaning. But neither does the question of when the fetus-baby gains personhood, though it has now become the very crux of the matter in overturning Roe v. Wade.

    Just because the Constitution (and fetal human rights) have no inherent political leaning, doesn’t mean the Democrats can’t politicize them.

    They could politicize a ham sandwich.

I must disagree in that after the Court Packing plan failed the Supreme Court acted like FDRs pet dog. They even could a man could be prosecuted for eating the very flour he raised.

Do the Democrats ever think things through? Say they allow court packing. Do they think it will go away if we elect another Republican president?

Two thoughts: “Harry Reid” and “nuclear option”.

The Dems all-but-eliminated the Senate filibuster to stop “Republican obstructionism” and pass Leftist bills. They were warned that a GOP-controlled Senate would be able to use the limited filibuster once they gained control, but the Dems (being delusional as well as power-driven) figured they’d control the Senate forever, and in any case passing the bills was more important in the short-term.

And then the unthinkable (to Dems) happened: the GOP gained control of the Senate. As the new minority party, the Dems found that the limited filibuster was a liability, not an asset, and the GOP was able to get bills passed that the Dems would filibuster, if they hadn’t already relinquished their means to do so.

(I think there’s a Second Amendment lesson there, too, that the Dems will also not see.)

The overarching lesson is, “In politics, never give yourself a tool that you wouldn’t want your opponents to use on you.” Democrats have repeatedly failed to learn this lesson, and I don’t see that changing anytime soon.

    As a follow-up, I find value in the Senate filibuster; it keeps the majority party from steam-rolling the minority party (which is exactly why the Dems wanted it gone — so they could steam-roll the GOP).

    Since the filibuster was just a Senate rule (it doesn’t exist anywhere in the Constitution), all it took to eliminate it was a rule change, by simple majority vote.

    I’ve advocated that as soon as the GOP is going to lose control of the Senate (which will happen, sooner or later), during the “lame duck” session (after Election Day, but before the new Congress is sworn in) they should vote, by simple majority, to bring back the full filibuster, but alter the rule to say that a two-thirds majority is required to override the filibuster (i.e. 67 votes instead of the previous 60), and three-fourths majority is required to change the rule again.

    Yes, that would bring Senate business to a stand-still. I see no problem with that, as it would also force bipartisanship to get ANYTHING done. The Senate is meant to be the more deliberative chamber in Congress. Steam-rolls are antithetical to that principle.

      gospace in reply to Archer. | March 21, 2019 at 5:11 pm

      It has already been determined that one senate’s rules cannot bind another. Nor can laws be binded in that manner. IIRC the Democrats put some super-majority requirements into the ACA to change parts of it. They cam all be safely ignored by future Congresses BECAUSE they’re not binding. The fixed rules are the ones in the Constitution.

      murkyv in reply to Archer. | March 21, 2019 at 5:29 pm

      It was 67 votes for Cloture from 1919 to 1975

      Not all that long ago

      Milhouse in reply to Archer. | March 22, 2019 at 10:50 am

      I’ve advocated that as soon as the GOP is going to lose control of the Senate (which will happen, sooner or later), during the “lame duck” session (after Election Day, but before the new Congress is sworn in) they should vote, by simple majority, to bring back the full filibuster, but alter the rule to say that a two-thirds majority is required to override the filibuster (i.e. 67 votes instead of the previous 60), and three-fourths majority is required to change the rule again.

      If they did that the incoming senate would immediately reverse it, so what would be the point?

Republicans may want to consider a dual path strategy. 1. Introduce the nine justice limit amendment. 2. Introduce legislation to immediately increase the number by six so Trump can appoint them.

OleDirtyBarrister | March 21, 2019 at 4:28 pm

It is not necessary, and Trump should jam it up their rectums and demonstrate what we know: the Dems only like ideas of reform that they believe will give them permanent political hegemony. In response to the Dem candidates, many of whom are presently in Congress, Trump should announce that he’ll go along with them, and he is nominating two new justices within the next 30 days with the advice of the Federalist Society. In addition, he will be submitting a revised budget for the judiciary to include the cost of two additional justices, their clerks, staffs, etc. Then force the vote and get the Dems on the record prior to the 2020 election.

Instead, Trump responded to media questions and stated that he was not interested in increasing the headcount.

Second, their job is to interpret the Constitution . . . the amendments in the Constitution have clear and precise language, especially the Bill of Rights.

So why are they “interpreting” it for us? SCOTUS has been a serial failure on that front for years. Even the “strict constructionists” simply won’t admit that the Constitution could ever mean exactly what it says.

“The temptation to create a Court of super-legislators must be resisted,” Green said Thursday. “Limiting the number of seats to the nine we have currently would help ensure the U.S. Supreme Court remain an impartial branch beholden to the Constitution and no political party.”

This is a bizarre claim. The current nine aren’t remotely impartial. Cutting them down to one or increasing them to a hundred wouldn’t make them impartial.

Of course he’s right, we can’t have an unelected uber-legislature with lifetime appointments. But simply specifying the number of Justices is not a useful quality-control system.

Thanks Mary. This bears repeating: “First off, let’s stop giving the Supreme Court so much power.”

They’re teeing it up as a trap so they can hammer them with it as a campaign issue. Dems will lose on this one. For once I credit the GOP with being smart.

buckeyeminuteman | March 21, 2019 at 7:17 pm

Add term limits to the bill. No more half-dead justices sitting around keeping their seat lukewarm. I say 10 years and that’s it.

“Democrats learning from history”????

Crooked Cortez, maggot Rashida Tlaib, Jew-hater Omar, traitor barack obama (or whoever he really is)… Come on!

The Blade is a joke. I should know, it’s my city’s newspaper.