It’s difficult to make substantive arguments against the Democrats’ Supreme Court “reform” proposal, since everyone knows it’s just a cynical ploy to delegitimize both the court and the Constitution.
Ask yourself this: Would any Democrat support the president’s court-packing scheme if they believed Republicans would win both Houses and the presidency? Of course not. It’s Calvinball all the way down.
And it is a court-packing scheme. An unconstitutional one. One imagines the term “court-packing” hasn’t polled very well with the public, so President Joe Biden – or whoever’s running the White House these days – signed off on a backdoor plan. An 18-year term limit for justices would, very conveniently, turn a 6-3 originalist majority into a 6-3 “living and breathing document” majority that would overturn many recent decisions, and rubber stamp a slew of federal abuses.
One might argue it’s all just an election gimmick, since the chances of the reform package passing are close to nil. That’s not the point. The Left has normalized the notion that the Supreme Court is both illegitimate and corrupt if it fails to bend to the will of partisans.
After all, none of the Left’s objections are grounded in anything resembling a legal argument. The entire case is centered around the specious idea that the court is failing because it does not adhere to the political vision of Democrats. They don’t even pretend to care about neutrality in law, much less the law itself. The contemporary leftist is a consequentialist with no limiting principles.
Speaking of authoritarians, Vice President Kamala Harris contends that packing the Supreme Court is necessary because “there is a clear crisis of confidence facing the Supreme Court.” Is there?
First off, we find ourselves here because of decades-long attacks on the institution. Wealthy progressive activist groups began cooking up pretend scandals and laundering them through faux journalistic operations.
The media can now affix the phrase “plagued by ethic scandals,” or some such nonsense, to every mention of the court. If there is any crisis of confidence, it’s because the Left concocted one.
Even still, Gallup finds that 30% of Americans have a “great deal/quite a lot” of confidence in the Supreme Court. The number has risen slightly in the past two years. Another 31% say they have “some” confidence in SCOTUS.
So, let’s set aside that pesky Article 3 of the Constitution for a moment. If polling is the excuse for stripping the independence of a branch of government, why would we allow Congress, with its 9% confidence rating, to do it?
Justices already enforce a code of judicial conduct. There is zero evidence any of them have engaged in unethical behavior on the bench that personally benefited a third party, much less themselves. And there is no evidence justices have deviated from their long-held legal philosophies because they vacationed with a rich friend or any other reason.
It’s also worth remembering that Democrats invented a bunch of new standards to smear Clarence Thomas that they would never follow themselves. Most judicial committee members leading the charge to delegitimize the court have traded in on their position to enrich themselves, including Dick Durbin, Richard Blumenthal, Sheldon Whitehouse and Peter Welch.
Come to think of it, maybe SCOTUS should be writing ethics rules for Congress.
Democrats want to institute their ethics code to create a system that allows partisans – armed with the newest garbage churned out by media – to slander justices in another congressional show trial and bogus investigations.
Sorry, the Supreme Court is an equal branch of government. Chuck Schumer is free to threaten justices, but they still don’t answer to him.
“What is happening now is not normal, and it undermines the public’s confidence in the court’s decisions, including those impacting personal freedoms. We now stand in a breach,” Biden says.
The president, whose family became wealthy peddling a shady influence racket, has a 26% confidence rating with Gallup.
The media, deservingly, is near the bottom of the list. Americans, in fact, have more trust in the Supreme Court than they do state-run schools or unions or big business or banks or the criminal justice system.
The president is correct in noting that the court has abnormally upheld the Constitution in recent years. Even then, majority concurrences are quite diverse. And the notion that the textualists walk lockstep more than the Left is a complete fantasy, as the last session showed.
Lifetime appointments for justices are meant to shield the high court from the vagaries and fleeting pressures of political debate. That is exactly what bothers the Left the most: the Supreme Court doing its job. If we knew exactly when confirmation votes were going to take place, the process would degenerate into an even uglier partisan mess. That, again, is exactly what the anti-norm leftist desires.
Indeed, the Democrats’ plan to pack the Supreme Court, the last properly functioning institution in D.C., is an attack on the constitutional order.
David Harsanyi is a senior editor at The Federalist. Harsanyi is a nationally syndicated columnist and author of five books – the most recent, “Eurotrash: Why America Must Reject the Failed Ideas of a Dying Continent.” His work has appeared in National Review, the Wall Street Journal, Washington Post, Reason, New York Post and numerous other publications. Follow him on Twitter @davidharsanyi.
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Not everyone agrees with many Supreme Court rulings. I don’t, however that is why we have the Supreme Court. To decide what is ethically and morally acceptable in the eyes of the justices. Biden squawks about the “unfair” decisions but he is just spitting into the wind. His student loan forgiveness program is a sham. Biden is just the Village Idiot without a Village. And Kamala is the second runner up. Hopefully American Citizens will understand the importance of his next election and not turn it no a popularity contest. Like, love or hate Trump, he is the best hope for getting our country back on track.
How about saving our “Constitutional Republic”!
Like the termites they are, eating away the foundation.
How do you “save democracy “ by destroying it? ????
there is absolutely nothign the democrats are not lying about. their entire party and all of their ideas are a lie and they know it. There voters know it’s all a lie and the media knows it is all a lie.
If you trust anyone on the left / dmeocrats you are a fool.
Under the constitution, the Supreme Court was created by the Constitution. Not the Congress not the President.
WE NEED TO SAVE DEMOCRACY BY DESTROYING THE DEMORATS THEY ARE DELUSIONAL LYING LUNITICS
The media did not create Donald Trump , therefore they cannot destroy him . The Democrats will burn this nation to the ground just to rule over the ashes. They are the epitome of evil.
The demoncrats are totally evil and they won’t stop until we are a totalitarian Marxist system in the US.
Complete and total power with Obama and Harris in charge yeah, won’t that be wonderful. And of course with the full support of the Chinese.
The Supreme Court was created by the Constitution, not the president or the Congess
Should they manage to destroy the Supreme court then their dream really would become a reality. What a nightmare.
The Democrats want to eliminate the system of checks and balances. Our founding father’s put them in the Constitution just for this reason.
The Supreme Court is put there by our forefathers to have the final say over a difficult dispute which cannot be solved by the two parties involved. And that decision is the final word. Both sides have to accept. Only the dems want to legislate how they should decide. And when that goes against them, so they think, they want to abolish the court. Or they ignore the verdict and do what they want. The scholarship and border decision is one of those examples. Obiden went his merry way and did what he wanted. Is that one of those crimes where he can’t claim immunity? Just asking. The dems from Obiden on down go after judges whose decisions they don’t like while they themselves are the biggest crooks with their bribes taking. Trying to get a judge killed is not a crime in the eyes of the dem. Bribing the Ukraine govt to fire a DA who was investigating Obiden’s son Hunter by threatening to withhold money and then bragging about it, also allowed. Nothing comes of that. Like Obiden always tells us if it is one thing he has done right is lie through his teeth. Oh sorry I meant to say he always tells the truth. If you say so Joe.
It’s NOT the Supreme Court that needs saving it’s the Democratic PARTY.
“…Gallup finds that 30% of Americans have a “great deal/quite a lot” of confidence in the Supreme Court. The number has risen slightly in the past two years. Another 31% say they have “some” confidence in SCOTUS.”
I have little doubt that if more of our citizens would take a civics class and learn why the SCOTUS exists and exactly what it supposed to do, far more people would think more highly of the SCOTUS. As it is, the public is fed nothing but lies about the SCOTUS by the Leftist-controlled media.
For those who simply don’t understand, let me explain something: The Democrat Party, never any friend to this nation or its citizens, long ago morphed into The New Communist Party of the USA. As such, they have the same goal as all Communists have had since Communism became a political movement: the destruction of the US, the downfall of Western Civilization, and the creation of a worldwide Communist dictatorship.
The Democrats have nothing but contempt for our Constitution, which they have spent the last century and more shredding, one little piece at a time. Expect them to continue to keep tearing it down.
The only legal way they can destroy it is by adding to it. A constitutional amendment would take a long time to set term limits, and they can’t constitutionally impose an ethics code because the Constitution does not provide for such and may never have intended so beyond good behavior. It would have to be proven that a justice swayed a case for lucre. Any legislation passed would have to pass Constitutional muster, and what organization does that?
People MUST be reminded that any nation that does not have an independent, co-equal Supreme Court has some form of tyranny, be it a single tyrant or an overbearing majority by legislators or the people. See California and some of the jackass propositions those ninnies have voted for. Which group of legislators voted against restrictions on investing while in office?
The only things these miscreant “Democrats” want to “save” are their political power… and other people’s hard-earned money… to put towards their wish-list of self-perpetuating political influence.
Those in search of altruistic motives must look elsewhere.
In my opinion, it isn’t of the democrats doing but of the entities that put the fire under their buts to do it, to control the whole government and the world.
For years we conservatives have stood by and had a Democratic majority on the court and lived under the cloud of Roe Vee Wade and now the worm has turned and the Democrats are no longer getting their way so the court has to change because the verdicts are no longer coming their way and they can only attack the court.
The democrats are trying to be the authoritarians. Whenever it does not go their way they want to change the rules. If the Supreme Court had a 6-3 liberal advantage, you wouldn’t hear any democrat suggesting any changes in the Supreme Court.
The Democrats “democracy” is like Russia & China
So how does this work anyway?! They say they’re going to save Democracy by destroying one of the three pillars of Democracy!! Hmm, they must be thinking of their Socialist democracy!
This country is not a democracy; it is a Constitutional Republic.
The only thing the democRATS want to save is their greedy, power hungry backsides.
They cannot be allowed to win and they are desperate to do whatever it takes to steal another election.
the left doesn’t have a clue as to what democracy eve is – they are such hypocrites
Like spoiled, undisciplined children, throwing public tantrums in the supermarket, because mommy won’t give them everything they want. November is their “time out”.
It really irks me when the Democrats imply that “the people” want this or that when it’s really just what fits their agenda. Who voted to have open borders? If they think that they speak for “the people” they should be not only ignored but ridiculed and rejected. Leave the Supreme Court alone!
The democrats will destroy anything that deals with Truth, Justice, and the American way.
All so the democrats can stay in power and control.
That’s pure Communism people.
Once again, the left is showing us that it’s all about THEIR power and entitlement, and no one else’s right to live in a country with thoughtful, legitimate, and effective governance.
The only Democracy the Democrats are going to save by destroying the Supreme Court is the Democrats’ version of what Democracy is not what our Founding Fathers intended. The only Democracy Democrats understand is the Democracy to do whatever they want to do, even if it means holding down the Peoples’ Democracy, and to have the right to put Conservatives, Christians, and Jews in prison if we do not fall in line with what they want. The Democrat Party is not the party of old. They are now made up of Fascists, Neo-NAZI’s, and Communists waiting to take down our country and tear up our Constitution, Bill of Rights, and Declaration of Independence.. They care nothing about the people.
We conservatives would call it destroying the court, but the left simply wants to weaponize the court as another arm of the left. The simple truth is the left, meaning virtually all Democrats these days, want a one party political tyranny with them in complete control. They hate our Constitution as written and intended because it limits federal power, so it must be ignored or at least interpreted in a way the left prefers. Why else do Democrats support an open border with voting rights for non-citizens? Why else do they propose these radical changes to the court? Why do they routinely work to buy votes with taxpayer money? The questions just keep coming, and the answers all have one purpose: a “fundamental transformation of America” as promised by Obama. It is in progress and is dangerously close to succeeding.Biden has done huge damage, Harris might finalize our demise. She is ideologically further left than Biden!
World Atlas (as of 2024) says: 46.50 % of US is Protestant with the remaining religions (53.50%) scattered over 12 classifications; the largest of which is apparently, Roman Catholic 20.80%) with Muslim at less than 1% (.90%). If we lose our freedom we’ll know where to look. Please vote. It’s only a lost cause if you listen to the minority. Please vote.
We will absolutely destroy the satanic democracy cult!
If you had to point at the one real reason for the demise of our country, it would not be our poor representation within our US Congress, or our poor Presidents (and we have had many poor ones), nor would it be the badly written 14, 15, 16, 17, and 18th amendments to our US Constitution. While all of these have played a part, they have had an ally that enabled them, allowed them to destroy our country, So who/what is that reason? There has been one body of people that could have prevented all of this from happening. That body has been our powerful, liberal, ally of our federal government our US Supreme Court.
Biden was sure proud to let the nation know that he peed on the shoes of the Supreme Court ruling about student loan “forgiveness “. “They said NO, but I’m doing it anyway”. Why is this not impeachable? He is unclear on tje concept of separation of power. Fool
The dims have already abused the court system by trying to put Donald Trump in jail. The conversation is not about the Supreme Court but about how the DOJ was turned into a political weapon by Biden/Harris. Can we discuss that ?
I believe that democrats should be called the Melendez brother party! Just like the Melendez brothers(liberal/democrats) they will kill the ones(Constitution of the United States)who try to guide them to a better Republic/life.I think you know what I mean.
The only thing I believe should change concerning SCOTUS is a mandatory retirement age. When lifetime appointment was established, death from old age was usually the mid-fifties to early sixties. Today we have judges in their eighties and nineties: Don’t tell me their age is not affecting their judgment. Other than a mandatory retirement age, leave the court alone.