Vice President Kamala Harris is backing the most radical attack on the Supreme Court in our nation's history, far more dangerous than President Franklin Roosevelt's failed, universally condemned plan to overstaff the court in the 1930s.
This new proposal is not just a plan for expanding the court or for term limits, but a plan for expansion and replacement that would add liberal justices, starting with Justice Clarence Thomas, and immediately remove conservative justices. Democrats do not believe in an independent judiciary and want to manipulate the court and control its decisions.
According to Senator Sheldon Whitehouse, the most virulent attacker of the Supreme Court's independence, Harris agreement The bill he proposed (S. 3096), the president must appoint new justices in the first and third years of his term, bringing the total to a maximum of 18 justices, meaning that only the nine most recently appointed justices can be involved in 99.9 percent of cases that come before the Supreme Court. President Joe Biden's suggestion The bill to limit the term limits of Supreme Court justices to 18 years is part of this dangerous plan.
FDR only Proposed Adding one justice for every sitting justice over 70 would create an opportunity to appoint six new justices, thus creating a majority that would approve New Deal policies and overturn the Supreme Court majority that had struck down many of his policies. The Democratic-led Senate Judiciary Committee Blown up This was President Franklin Roosevelt's plan to attack the independence of the Supreme Court, but under his plan no justice would have been disqualified from taking part in a case.
Harris, Biden and the White House have no such concerns. Under their plan, Justice Thomas would be immediately disqualified from nearly all cases once Harris nominates him in 2025. Chief Justice Roberts would then be disqualified in 2027 and Justice Alito in 2029.
This bill aims to remove constitutional law scholar judges who have stood up to the left's attacks on the rule of law. This is a clear attempt to bring partisan politics into an apolitical branch of government. Democrats had no problem with lifetime appointments and judicial ethics until President Trump appointed three conservatives to the Supreme Court, making it no longer an endorsement of left-wing policies.
Only then did Democrats launch spurious ethics attacks on conservative judges for withholding the information. vacation With friends or with my wife The iconic American flag was raisedJustice Ginsburg Attacked During the 2016 campaign, lawyers representing candidate Trump or their spouses appeared before the Supreme Court, but she never recused herself.
With Vice President Harris supporting Senator Whitehouse's bill, it becomes clear what the so-called “ethics” attack was aimed at: to undermine public confidence in the Supreme Court and pave the way for the introduction of the most radical legislation to destroy its independence. Because the left doesn't like the Supreme Court's decisions on abortion, affirmative action, the administrative state, the Second Amendment, and presidential immunity, this new law would rapidly shift the balance of power on the Supreme Court to produce the “right” outcome. Democrats lost these battles, so they want to change the rules.
The Harris/Whitehouse bill is constitutional. Regulations The Supreme Court has broad appellate jurisdiction “with such exceptions as Congress may prescribe,” in contrast to the original jurisdiction of the Supreme Court over disputes between states as provided in the Constitution. Whatever the scope of this “exception” to appellate jurisdiction, Congress is clearly only permitted to deny jurisdiction over the Supreme Court as a whole, not over individual justices of the Court. Otherwise, Congress could enact laws disqualifying Republican-appointed justices from hearing cases involving presidential immunity.
If Democrats get their way on the Supreme Court, our country will soon become unrecognizable. A new, left-leaning Supreme Court would allow the federal government to silence unjust speech, restrict religious freedom and the right to bear arms, confiscate wealth and property (including by taxing unrealized gains), allow unelected bureaucrats to regulate more aspects of personal and business life, undermine meritocracy and allow race-based bailouts to run rampant, and leave our borders permanently open to unlimited illegal immigration and allow violent criminals to roam free.
This bill is unconstitutional, but if enacted, it would certainly lead to serious constitutional conflicts and threaten our entire system of government and the rule of law. Democrats like to say that democracy itself is on the ballot. And they may be right. This bill is a deadly threat to an independent Supreme Court and the rule of law, and it must be rejected.
Mark Paoletta is a senior fellow at the Center for American Renewal. He served in President George H.W. Bush's White House Counsel's Office on the confirmation of Judge Thomas, and in the Trump Administration on the confirmations of Gorsuch and Kavanaugh. He represented Ginny Thomas in the January 6 Select Committee investigation. He is co-editor of Created Equal: Clarence Thomas in His Own Words.
