President Joe Biden on Friday announced his decision to create a commission that would study the impacts of packing the Supreme Court. Biden’s long-term goal, obviously, is for Congress to up the number of justices so the conservative makeup of the court swings further left.
Of course, Biden is tapping two left-wing partisans from the Obama administration to spearhead the effort.
“The panel will be led by Bob Bauer, who served as White House counsel for Mr. Obama, and Cristina Rodriguez, a Yale Law School professor who served as deputy assistant attorney general in the Office of Legal Counsel under Mr. Obama,” The New York Times reported.
Democrats have flirted with court packing over the last few years, in large part due to President Donald Trump’s judicial success. While in office, President Trump appointed three Supreme Court justices – Neil Gorsuch, Brett Kavanaugh, and Amy Coney Barrett – and more than 200 federal court judges. According to Pew Research Center, Trump appointed almost as many judges to the federal bench as President Barack Obama did in two terms.
Although Congress has the power to change the number of seats on the Supreme Court, the number has traditionally remained at nine.
“Article III of the Constitution, which establishes the Judicial Branch, leaves Congress significant discretion to determine the shape and structure of the federal judiciary,” the White House website explains. “Even the number of Supreme Court Justices is left to Congress — at times there have been as few as six, while the current number (nine, with one Chief Justice and eight Associate Justices) has only been in place since 1869.”
Increasing the number of justices that make up the Supreme Court is a dangerous precedent with long-term consequences. The United States is a country rooted in tradition and precedent. We have a respect for the rule of law and the decisions those before us made, even if we don’t always agree with them.
Our Founding Fathers established a system that could stand the test of time. Their goal was to keep our republic stable, to prevent the government from acting on the whims of the “ignorant masses.” They wanted a system that would far surpass a brief moment in time where tensions were high. And the Supreme Court was regarded as the one thing that remained consistent, tried, and true. It’s why justices have a life-time appointment and their salaries remain the same throughout their time on the high court. It’s to keep them free from the political rift that takes place in Congress and the White House.
Shifting the number of justices on the Supreme Court will not only shred our history but it would completely contradict what our Founding Fathers wanted for our nation. Once the number of justices are increased, there’s nothing in place to prevent the number of seats from being continually upped every time the opposing party comes into power. There’s no limit to how many justices would sit on the highest court in the land.
Beth Baumann is a Political Reporter at The Daily Wire. Follow her on Twitter @eb454.
The views expressed in this piece are the author’s own and do not necessarily represent those of The Daily Wire.