Democrats and Joe Biden want to pack the Supreme Court; Republicans and President Trump do not.
But what is “court packing?”
For decades, court packing has always been known as that which President FDR attempted to do in the 1930s: to create new, additional seats on the U.S. Supreme Court and to then fill those seats with liberal lawyers who will implement liberal policies as Justices of the Supreme Court.
What is Not Court Packing?
In recent days, Biden and Senate Democrats claim that President Trump has already been “packing the court.” That is laughably false.
Court packing is not what President Trump, President Obama, and every U.S. President has done since the birth of our nation: filling federal judicial seats as they become vacant. The Constitution provides that federal judicial vacancies are filled by nomination of the President and confirmation (advice and consent) of the Senate. So, the placement of Justices Gorsuch, Kavanaugh, and Barrett on the Court is not “court packing,” but rather the constitutional filling of vacancies that occurred when Scalia, Kennedy and Ginsburg vacated seats on the Court.
Research “court packing” yourself. But perhaps do so quickly before Wikipedia, Facebook, Twitter and their lingo overlords change the meaning of “Court Packing” to suit their present political agenda. Consider the conversation between Alice and Humpty Dumpty:
‘When I use a word,’ Humpty Dumpty said in rather a scornful tone, ‘it means just what I choose it to mean – neither more nor less.’
‘The question is,’ said Alice, ‘whether you can make words mean different things – that’s all.’
‘The question is,’ said Humpty Dumpty, ‘which is to be master – that’s all.’
If Democrats were to win the elections and become "master," they would not only “pack the court” but they would change the meaning of words and call it “judicial reform.” This “court packing” packaged as “reform” would destroy the role of the judiciary by turning it into a political body that within eight years could literally triple in size.
Mutually Assured Packing
Consider the following foreseeable scenario. If Democrats win Congress and the White House in 2020, and pack the Court in 2021, they would likely add four new Justices to create an activist liberal majority. However, if Republicans won the elections in 2025, they could add six new Justices to take back a solidly constitutional majority on the Court. Then, if Democrats won the elections in 2029, they could add 8 new Justices to take back an activist liberal majority on the Court. And viola, by the year 2029, we could have a Supreme Court with 27 Justices.
And the worst part would not be the size of the Court, but the destruction of the role of the U.S. Judiciary at the very moment that Justices like Amy Coney Barrett are in the process of returning power to the people by removing the Court from the illegitimate role of making law from the bench.
That is the real reason that Joe Biden, Kamala Harris and their Communist lords want to create new seats and pack the Court. For the last two generations, liberals have always enjoyed a “Political Wild Card” that enables them to call on the Supreme Court to implement their agenda by judicial legislation anytime they are unable to accomplish it legitimately through the proper constitutional methods. The loss of this corrupt judicial wild card is causing them to … lose it.
If Joe Biden and Senate Democrats really want to “fix” the Supreme Court, then they should work to confirm Judge Amy Coney Barrett because she wants to remove the Court from engaging in the anti-constitutional practice of legislating from the bench. Barrett will be neither a “conservative” nor a “liberal” Justice but a “constitutional” Justice. That is what Joe and Senate Democrats fear and hate: the loss of their judicial/political wild card.
At the close of the Constitutional Convention of 1787, Ben Franklin excited the hall and Americans asked him whether the new government was a republic or a monarchy, to which Franklin replied: “A republic, if you can keep it.”
Our Nation is returning the Judiciary to its proper role of deciding cases rather than legislating from the bench. The question for us is whether we can keep it by preventing Biden and Senate Democrats from packing it.