The Democratic Party wants to break the United States s legislative filibuster in order to pack the with jurisprudential clones of Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson, who has quickly emerged as the most radical of the nine justices. (Justice Jackson is also the most loquacious, as Mollie Hemingway points out in her new bestseller, “Alito: The Justice Who Reshaped the Supreme Court and Restored the Constitution.” Justice Jackson uttered 78,215 words from the bench in the 2023-2025 term. Justices Gorsuch and Kagan got the silver and bronze in the spoken-word competition, but it wasnt close, as they were both around 50,000 words apiece.
President supported expanding the Court to 14 members in April 2021. Massachusetts Sen. Ed Markey is one of many senators who have also applauded the number 14. Thats no surprise, as adding five radicals to Justices Ketanji Brown Jackson, Elena Kagan and Sonia Sotomayor would lock in an eight-vote bloc of justices who, after that revolution, would simply be legislators in robes. Kiss the Constitution goodbye if and when “the Nine” becomes “the Fourteen.” Hard-left progressivism, whatever the flavor of that day may be, will be in the saddle.
The Fifth and 14th Amendments to the Constitution guarantee every American ” of law.” Do those guarantees stand between a left-wing Congress and a left-wing president bent on torching the Constitution?
It is hard to deny that all precedents would be out the door with a radicalized Court packed with progressive activist law professors. The precedents might end up out the door with a nine-justice court if Democrats win enough elections, as Father Time remains undefeated when it comes to the current membership of the Court. That would not be a radical change, but rather a process the public could see and intervene in via elections. There is no denying that the Supreme Court vacancy at the time of the 2016 election helped power President s stunning upset win that year. More than a few voters that year were motivated by the fear of a Court dominated by nominees of prospective President .
Democrats are quick to point out that the Constitution is silent on the exact number of justices and that, in fact, Congress often tweaked the number of justices between 1789 and the Act of 1869, which fixed the number of justices at nine, a number that has not changed since.
That 1869 act followed fast on the heels of the 14th Amendment, which was ratified in 1868 and which joined its guarantee of “due process of law” to that same guarantee in the Fifth Amendment. The 14th Amendments ratification in 1868 and the Courts right-sizing, which followed the next year, suggests a consensus at the time of the amendment, one that has never been changed since. (The Court has also never had more than 10 justices, and that just briefly.) The Biden-Markey proposal is many things, but it is not rooted in American history, and it certainly would destroy “due process of law” in the nation.
Court-packing would, in fact, mark the actual end of the rule of law, and the manipulation of the Court would follow every future political upheaval in which both houses of Congress and the president controlled the federal . Thats just what happens when suddenly a major break with tradition and practice occurs. The other side of the aisle adopts the tactic too.
Democratic Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid broke the Senates filibuster rules via the “nuclear option” in order to confirm judges to the D.C. Circuit in 2013 over the objection and warning of then-Republican Leader . Soon the Senates majority switched from Democrats to Republicans, and McConnell made good on his warning by using simple majorities to confirm three nominees to the Supreme Court put forward by President Trump. Bad move, Harry, but not one that out-and-out destroyed the institution of the Court.
Packing the Supreme Court via simple-majority votes â or even by supermajority â would be a
