After suffering a series of losses before the U.S. Supreme Court, leftists in Congress are once again trying to remake the court to suit their own political purposes.
Sen. Ron Wyden, D-Ore., on Thursday introduced the Judicial Modernization and Transparency Act, which would expand the number of Supreme Court justices from nine to 15 over the next 12 years, radically reshaping the federal judiciary.
According to the provisions of Wyden’s legislation, federal circuit and district courts would also be expanded, adding 60 new circuit judges and at least 100 new district judges.
“The Supreme Court is in crisis and bold solutions are necessary to restore the public trust,” Wyden said in a press release. “More transparency, more accountability, and more checks on a power-hungry Supreme Court are just what the American people are asking for.”
But they’re not, according to polls. A survey published late last month revealed that nearly 60% of Americans oppose adding justices to the Supreme Court and agree that efforts “to expand the membership of the U.S. Supreme Court are primarily motivated by political objectives.”
Additionally, 57% of Americans believe that a separate branch of government (such as Congress) imposing an “ethics code” on the Supreme Court would undermine its authority and threaten the independence of the judiciary.
Yet an “ethics code” is also part of Wyden’s proposed legislation. His bill would force all justices to respond publicly to recusal motions and forcibly recuse a justice from a case “upon the affirmative vote of” his fellow justices.
The bill would also demand “the public disclosure of how each justice voted for any case within the appellate jurisdiction of the Supreme Court” and would give the Internal Revenue Service sweeping authority to regularly audit justices and publish the results of their audits.
Furthermore, the legislation would require either the Supreme Court or an appellate court to have a two-thirds “supermajority” in order to reverse congressional acts found to be unconstitutional.
Democrats have been working to undermine the Supreme Court’s authority since last year, when several smear campaigns were launched in the media, primarily targeting Justices Clarence Thomas and Samuel Alito, both of whom were part of the court majority that overturned Roe v. Wade in 2022. Thomas and Alito were accused of unethical conduct related to expense-paid vacations with wealthy friends and Republican donors.
Alito was subsequently targeted for his conservative political views and the political views of his wife, including the publication of secret recordings in which Alito and his wife discussed their Catholic faith with a reporter who was posing as a conservative at a Supreme Court Historical Society dinner.
The reports were met with calls from Democrats, such as Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez of New York, for Thomas and Alito to resign from the bench.
Earlier this summer, President Joe Biden introduced his own plans for weakening the nation’s highest court via constitutional amendments: enforcing an “ethics code” devised by Congress and imposing 18-year term limits on justices, which would immediately take effect and remove Thomas, Alito, and Chief Justice John Roberts from the court.
Biden also introduced plans to undo the court’s recent ruling on presidential immunity. In her dissent from the court’s majority opinion, Justice Sonia Sotomayor controversially suggested that Biden might order a Navy SEAL team to assassinate former President Donald Trump. Two weeks later, a would-be assassin shot Trump at a campaign rally in Butler, Pennsylvania.
Conservatives in Congress have pledged to oppose Biden’s Supreme Court “reform” proposals, many of which are similar (though less expansive) than Wyden’s. Indirectly responding to the Democrats’ designs on the court, Justice Neil Gorsuch asked last month, “The independent judiciary … what does it mean to you as an American?”
Gorsuch continued: “It means that when you’re unpopular you can get a fair hearing, under the law and under the Constitution. If you’re in the majority, you don’t need judges and juries to hear you and protect your rights—you’re popular.”
He asked again: “Don’t you want a ferociously independent judge and a jury of your peers to make those decisions? Isn’t that your right as an American? And so I just say, ‘Be careful.’”
Originally published by The Washington Stand
Reprinted with permission from The Daily Signal by S.A. McCarthy.
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