Democrats Revive Calls To Pack Supreme Court
Liberals re-invigorated their calls for liberals to fill the Supreme Court after the conservative majority of the court ruled in several cases that liberals deemed incorrect.
The Supreme Court issued three important decisions in a number of closely watched cases on Thursday and Friday. The Supreme Court ruled against Harvard’s and University of North Carolina’s race-based admissions policies, a Christian designer who refused to design wedding websites for couples of the same gender, and President Biden’s student loan forgiveness plan.
Democrats and liberals were furious at the Supreme Court. Some called for an expansion of the bench in order to dilution the conservative majority that was cemented by the three conservative nominees from former President Donald Trump.
Rep. Adam Schiff (D, CA) said that adding more justices would not be “extreme”.
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In a Friday tweet, Schiff said: “Expanding Supreme Court size is not extreme or unprecedented – but the opinions expressed by this Court are.”
The opinions of the Supreme Court are certainly extreme and unprecedented.
— Adam Schiff (@AdamSchiff) June 30, 2023
Schiff reiterated his call for the court to be packed in an email sent to supporters of his Senate Campaign, but changed the terminology, calling it “unpacking”.
According to Washington Examiner’s Paul Bedard, Schiff wrote in a letter to supporters that “we must unpack the Court by expanding the justices, instituting terms limits, and enacting an ethics code like every other federal courts.”
“I have spent years discussing the need to expand the Supreme Court, remove the partisans, and reform it after Donald Trump and Mitch McConnell filled it with them. We saw the effects of the imbalance this week,” Schiff wrote in an email.
Last month, Schiff was censured in the House. The censure motion accused Schiff of misleading American citizens about Trump’s alleged ties with Russia, while leading the House Intelligence Committee investigations into the President.
Ayanna Pressley, a representative from the Democratic Party of Massachusetts (MA), said on Sunday that the idea of packing the court was something to consider.
Pressley responded to a MSNBC question by saying, “I think that everything should be put on the table.” She was asked if she supported adding more justices.
She added that the Supreme Court has “been emboldened to roll back the time, undermine and roll back what should have been fundamental civil human rights.”
Pressley stated that “everything should be on the agenda: reform and expansion”.
Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, a representative from the Democratic Party of New York (D-NY), has called before for the expansion of the Supreme Court. On Sunday she called to check the power that the court holds.
“The courts will be undemocratic, and frankly, dangerous, if there is no check on the power of their judges, or a balance to their power,” Ocasio-Cortez stated Sunday on CNN.
Some liberal academics also called to fill the court.
David Faris is an associate professor at Roosevelt University, Chicago, who authored a Newsweek opinion piece on Friday. The article’s headline read: “Biden won’t pack the Supreme Court and it’s killing democracy.”
Faris wrote that “court expansion, with or without Biden,” must be a litmus-test for any Democrat seeking federal office. The alternative is that we spend the next 15 months learning what parts of American public life have been upended needlessly by corrupt originalists and how the Supreme Court has helped Republicans gain and wield more power.
Most Americans oppose adding more justices, despite the fact that most Democrats seem to support a crowded court.
According to a survey conducted by the Heartland Institute in conjunction with Rasmussen Reports last year, 55% of voters are against expanding the Supreme Court from nine to thirteen justices. 64% of Democrats, however, support the addition of four additional justices.
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