WASHINGTON, DC, Apr 9 — While President Biden and progressive Democrats in Congress press for expanding the number of Supreme Court Justices — what is known as ‘court-packing” — a notably liberal Justice, Stephen Breyer, warns against it. He says it would minimize respect for the high court and respect for the rule of law.
The White House says that Biden’s commission to study reforms to the United States Supreme Court, which he announced today, would focus, not just on the expansion of the number of Justices on the Court, but would also analyze how the Court chooses what cases to deliberate.
In a lecture at Harvard Law School earlier this week, Justice Breyer said that he wanted to “make those whose initial instincts may favor important structural (or other similar institutional) changes, such as forms of ‘court-packing,’ think long and hard before embodying those changes in law.” He went on to say, “Our power, the court’s power, has to depend on the public’s willingness to respect its decision. Respect even those decisions they disagree with… even when they think the decision is seriously mistaken.”
Meanwhile, progressives have started calling for Breyer to retire so that Biden can appoint a Democrat to replace him and start packing the Court. But Breyer appears to be standing pat. He says that, first of all, it is the wrong thing to do, explaining that such a move would define the Court as “another political institution.”
Harvard University law professor Noah Feldman, in an Opinion Article published by Bloomberg, concurred: “The more the timing of [his] retirement is depicted as a partisan objective, the less he will want to do it. To be seen to retire ‘in order’ to let Biden pick his successor would betray Breyer’s own career-long objective of making decisions based on what is right for the country, not for one party.”
Just how desperate are progressives to start packing SCOTUS is demonstrated by the actions of Demand Justice, a group of progressives intent on packing the Court, is reported to have hired a billboard truck to drive around the Supreme Court with the message: Breyer, retire. It’s time for a Black woman Supreme Court justice. There’s no time to waste. And, they’re asking visitors to its Website to sign a petition to; Tell Justice Breyer: Put the country first. Don’t risk your legacy to an uncertain political future. Retire now.
Breyer seems determined to ignore these calls, convinced that, as he put it, “If the public sees judges as politicians in robes, its confidence in the courts and in the rule of law can only diminish, diminishing the court’s power, including its power to act as a check on other branches.”