Editor’s Note: For another viewpoint, see POINT: The Supreme Court Is Already “Packed;” Democrats Need To Unpack.
For the first time in almost a century, conservatives have a majority on the U.S. Supreme Court. Which is why it’s no surprise that progressives suddenly want to “reform” it.
Since 1869, there have been nine justices on the court. Now, liberals say, they want to change that number so President Joe Biden and a 50-50 U.S. Senate can “pack” the bench with left-leaning justices. After all, the federal courts are the tool that the left has used for decades to implement social policies that they could never pass in state legislatures or in Congress.
Courts were never meant to be representative bodies. That’s why the Constitution gives federal judges lifetime tenure, to protect them from political influence.
Whether Democrats like to hear it or not, America is a center-right country. State legislatures reflect that. And to a large extent, so has Congress for most of the last 40 years. Courts are where the left has poured time, resources, and talent.
Why waste money passing something through Congress or a state legislature when you can get a judge to implement it?
Two examples stand out. First, immigration. The overwhelming majority of Americans want enforcement of immigration laws. They don’t want aliens flooding the United States, faking asylum claims, and getting government checks.
But the federal courts do. They issued waves of orders and injunctions blocking Trump administration efforts to limit that abuse. Courts kept the gates open to illegal immigration when the American people wanted it stopped.
That doesn’t happen without the right judges in place.
Second, despite the fact that every poll shows Americans support voter ID and citizenship verification laws to vote, it’s the courts where the Democrats turn to thwart the democratic will of the people. Support for those election safeguards transcends every demographic – white, black, Hispanic, and even Republican and Democrat. Voter ID enjoys majority support for all demographics, save for one: ideologically liberal Whites.
And guess who the elites in the White House turn to for judicial nominees? Ideological liberals.
Those judges have the power to undo the will of the people. They can strike down limits on illegal immigration, election safeguards, and a whole bundle of policies overwhelmingly favored by the American people.
At the same time, those sorts of judges tend to find rights mentioned nowhere in the Constitution – such as the purported Fourteenth Amendment right for illegal immigrants to receive government benefits once they get to the United States.
The tantrum being thrown about “packing” the Supreme Court is simply because ideological liberals are no longer in control.
That’s why they want to re-write the rules. That’s why, after years of talking about “upholding norms” during the Trump administration, progressives want to toss out more than a century of precedent and change the number of justices on the court.
Courts are central to the life of the ideological left. Without them, their policy dreams are next to impossible to implement.
Sure, the most liberal states such as New York, Rhode Island, and California have legislatures that will pass all manner of policies attractive to the ideological left. But that isn’t true for most of the United States. Republicans control, for example, 61 state legislative chambers, while Democrats hold only 37.
When most of the political map of the United States is filled with red with only blue coastal bookends, Democrats need something else to enact policies they can’t pass and stop those they oppose.
This fight didn’t start when Merrick Garland wasn’t confirmed by a Republican Senate in 2016. It started when courts began acting like legislatures and implemented policy decisions contrary to the will of the people. Now that the Supreme Court is unlikely to uphold that mischief, some now threaten the court itself.
