News broke on Wednesday night that Senate and House Democrats are preparing to unveil legislation as soon as today to pack the Supreme Court with four new justices, which left-wing media admits would “give Democrats a 7-6 majority.”
The move comes just days after Democrat President Joe Biden created a commission to study court packing because he was “under pressure from activists.”
When he was a U.S. Senator in 1983, Biden slammed court packing when discussing former Democrat Franklin D. Roosevelt’s attempts to pack the courts in 1937.
“President Roosevelt clearly had the right to send to the United States Senate and the United States Congress a proposal to pack the court. It was totally within his right to do that. He violated no law. He was legalistically absolutely correct,” Biden said. “But it was a bonehead idea. It was a terrible, terrible mistake to make, and it put in question for an entire decade, the independence of the most significant body, including the Congress, in my view, the most significant body in this country, the Supreme Court of the United States of America.”
FLASHBACK THREAD: Remember when Biden asserted that packing the court is “a bonehead idea"? pic.twitter.com/UTi1GTXzXi
— JCN (@judicialnetwork) April 9, 2021
More than two decades later, while he was still a U.S. Senator, Biden again slammed court packing when discussing FDR’s attempted power grab.
“The Senate again stood firm in ’37 in the court packing to attempt. In this particular example, the Senate’s resolve is instructive of today’s debates. So let me describe in some detail, in the summer of ’37, Roosevelt had just come off a landslide victory over Alf Landon,” Biden said. “He had a Congress made up of a solid new dealers, but the nine old men of the court were thwarting his agenda. In this environment, Roosevelt, and remember this whole adage about power corrupts and absolute power corrupts absolutely, corrupted by power in my view, unveiled his court packing plan, he wanted to increase the number of justices to 15, allowing himself to nominate those additional judges. It took an act of courage on the part of his own party, institutionally to stand up against this power grab.”
Biden also said that FDR was “corrupted by power” when he attempted to pack the court in 1937. Biden praised Democrats for standing against FDR's court-packing plan, calling it "executive overreach." pic.twitter.com/wgbeEhN852
— JCN (@judicialnetwork) April 9, 2021
Last September, while running for president, Biden appeared to criticize the idea as norm-busting, calling out the idea that some people think that “our system doesn’t work anymore.” Biden specifically called out court packing, saying, “what are we talking about?”
In 2019, Biden criticized the idea of court-packing, asking: “What are we talking about?” pic.twitter.com/viKtBf6vx8
— JCN (@judicialnetwork) April 9, 2021
The next month, after the death of Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg, Biden said during an interview that he was “not” a fan of “court packing” because it creates a situation where “whoever wins, it just keeps moving in a way that is inconsistent with what is going to be manageable.”
And during his 2020 presidential campaign, Biden said he’s “not been a fan of court-packing." pic.twitter.com/aSSeIny082
— JCN (@judicialnetwork) April 9, 2021
Court packing is politically toxic as polls have shown that the majority of Americans oppose it and only a small percentage support it. Even democratic socialist Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-VT) opposes court packing, as does leftist Justice Stephen Breyer. Ginsburg also opposed court packing.