House and Senate Democrats are reportedly preparing to unveil legislation on Thursday to pack the Supreme Court with four new justices, a move that would change the balance of power on the nation’s highest court.
“The bill would add four seats to the high court, bringing the total to 13, from the current 9,” The Intercept reported. “The bill is led by House Judiciary Committee Chair Jerry Nadler, Subcommittee chair Hank Johnson, and freshman Rep. Mondaire Jones. In the Senate, the bill is being championed by Ed Markey of Massachusetts.”
The legislation comes after Democrat President Joe Biden announced last week that he had created a commission to study court packing — a political move that is so controversial that the majority of Americans oppose it — because, according to The New York Times, he was “under pressure from activists.” Before last year’s election, Biden said that voters did not “deserve” to know his stance on packing the courts.
The Daily Wire reported last week:
Court packing is so toxic that even socialist Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-VT) does not support it and has warned that if Democrats do it then “the next time the Republicans are in power they will do the same thing.”
Leftist Supreme Court Justice Stephen Breyer, a registered Democrat, warned this week during a speech at Harvard that packing the court will diminish “confidence in the courts, and in the rule of law itself” which will lead to “diminishing the court’s power, including its power to act as a ‘check’ on the other branches.”
Even leftist Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg warned against packing the courts, saying that it will make the court appear more partisan and will trigger a constant expansion of the courts every time there is a power change in Washington, D.C.
Even former Democrat Senator Harry Reid (NV) warned over the weekend that Democrats better be careful with trying to alter the composition of the Supreme Court.
“I think it’s — we should be very, very careful in doing so. I have no problem with the commission, but I think that the commission is going to come back and disappoint a lot of people because I think they’re going to come back and say, we should just kind of leave it alone,” Reid said. “I think it would be inappropriate at this time after that long history we’ve had in the country [to] have term limits for judges. I think that we better be very, very careful in saying that we need to expand the Supreme Court. I think we better be very, very, careful.”
Mike Davis, founder and president of the Article III Project (A3P), warned that Biden’s move was “alarming” and must “be met with the harshest of denunciations from both sides of the aisle” because packing the Supreme Court would lead to “irreversible damage.”
“Packing the Supreme Court would destroy centuries of hard work from Democrat- and Republican-appointed justices to insulate the high court from partisan politics,” Davis warned. “It also raises serious red flags as to what unconstitutional actions President Biden is planning that a more favorable Supreme Court might tolerate.”
This article has been expanded after publication to include additional information.