Then-Senator and Democratic presidential nominee Kamala Harris did not rule out adding more nominees to the Supreme Court in 2019 as she sought her party's endorsement to face then-President Donald Trump in the 2020 election.
The vice president and 2024 Democratic presidential candidate repeatedly said during the last campaign that he was not opposed to expanding the Supreme Court, which would theoretically allow liberal justices to assume a majority role through new appointments.
“I'm open to the discussion of expanding the staffing of the United States Supreme Court,” Harris told voters in Nashua, New Hampshire, after being asked about adding four seats to the Supreme Court. Bloomberg reported at that time.
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Kamala Harris has previously asserted that she is open to adding more justices to the Supreme Court. (Reuters)
Harris' interest in adding seats to the Supreme Court wasn't just a one-off statement: During the 2019 primary campaign, she reiterated her support for adding seats to the Supreme Court to both The New York Times and Politico.
Harris Claims to Politico At the time, it was said that “everything is under consideration” in order to restore trust in the Supreme Court, including increasing the number of judges.
she The New York Times She was asked if she wanted to elaborate on whether she would be “open” to adding more courts, but she declined to do so.
“I just accept it,” she said.
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The U.S. Supreme Court, located in Washington, DC, is the seat of the highest court and judicial branch of the United States. (Robert Alexander/Getty Images)
Harris' campaign did not immediately respond to a request for comment from Fox News Digital by press time. Asked if Harris still supported adding to the court, she said:
Last month, the Biden-Harris administration unveiled a series of policies aimed at reforming the Supreme Court, including calling for term limits for justices who are currently appointed for life, an enforceable ethics code for judges, and a constitutional amendment to overturn a Supreme Court ruling that gives former presidents effective immunity from prosecution for their actions while in office.
The reforms also include staffing the Supreme Court, according to an analysis by former Trump administration lawyer Mark Paoletta. The Biden-Harris plan, quietly included in the term limits proposal, outlines a system in which the president would appoint a new Supreme Court justice “every two years” and have them “serve on the Court for 18 years.”
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The Biden-Harris administration recently announced a plan for reforming the Supreme Court. (Tierney L. Cross/Bloomberg via Getty Images)
“Joe Biden has caved to extremism and recently supported adding to the court, but Harris is even further to the left than Biden on this thoroughly discredited idea,” Paoletta, who was notably active in the confirmation efforts of Justices Clarence Thomas, Brett Kavanaugh and Neil Gorsuch, said in a statement to Fox News Digital.
The White House did not immediately respond to Fox News Digital's request for comment.
Harris' past comments and her refusal to comment further on the matter suggest the administration may enact more sweeping reforms than just expanding the Supreme Court, as outlined in the administration's preferred reform package.
Paoletta pointed to recent assertions by Democratic Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse of Rhode Island, who said Harris' campaign told him the Supreme Court's bill “is exactly in line with what we're talking about.” Dispatch report.
“According to Senator Sheldon Whitehouse, the most egregious individual in the United States trying to undermine the independence of the Supreme Court, Ms. Harris supports his court expansion bill that would remove the senior most justices from active duty: Justices Thomas, Roberts and Alito,” Paoletta explained.
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Democrats have blasted the Supreme Court's conservative majority. (Photo: Alex Wong/Getty Images)
Ms Harris argued that the White House plan was “far more egregious” than former President Franklin Delano Roosevelt's “court expansion plan,” which she reportedly supports.
As Paoletta noted, the White House-drafted bill has a similar structure to Biden and Harris' latest proposal, with justices appointed every two years. Only the nine most recently appointed justices would oversee appellate cases, the bill says. It also says “all” justices would preside over original cases, without specifying a specific number.
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Before his latest reform proposal, Biden had refrained from supporting adding to the Supreme Court, despite urgings from other Democrats. He previously Democrats have warned If he takes such action, he will “regret it.”
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