Left Calls For Right To Pack The Supreme Court
It turns out when you can’t get what you want by votes, and the court that you have held so long is slipping out of your grasp, truth no longer matters, neither does the constitution or the will of your constituents, all you are focused on is the power you held for so long slipping out of your hands, at least this is the perspective of the progressive left. The Left is upset because they know if they can’t control the highest court, they will lose their ability to change this nation with judicial legislation rather then the way our founders intended, this has down out the worst in them as they fight to keep the little power they have left.
It's time to pack the Supreme Court. https://t.co/YSxHZT3T74
— Jacobin (@jacobinmag) June 28, 2018
This is not something new for the left, going back to Roosevelt, we saw the Democrats try to pack the highest court, figuring what they could not get by legislation they could get by an activist court, thankfully Congress at that time was having none of it, in a bipartisan vote the Senate struck down his ideas of packing the Supreme Court with 15 justices by a margin of 70 to 22.
It's time to pack the court. Desperate times call for desperate measures. https://t.co/6Vt5NFzgsH pic.twitter.com/XTmrLSlrnv
— The New Republic (@newrepublic) June 27, 2018
It turns out this is now what the left wants to try again, unfortunately, this time I seriously doubt the progressives in the Senate would oppose such a measure, seems they are doomed to keep repeating the same mistake.
We have to remember, under Obama and Reid, the need to push bills through cause them, in spite of warnings from McConnel, to push through what then was known as the nuclear option. This stopped all filibustering and forced the vote to just a majority instead of 60% vote, which they had until then. When this was passed it was due to Obama trying to fill federal vacancies with liberal activist judges, we have seen the result of this since Trump has taken power, the GOP members were having none of it, so the progressives passed the nuclear option.
Under a Democratic president, Democrats in Congress should increase the number of Supreme Court seats to at least 11. https://t.co/TtxL44jCwN
— The Outline (@outline) June 28, 2018
Now you hear the left say they want this law done away with, they tried it after the DNC lost the 2016 election, the GOP at that time would not let them, something they are claiming now is somehow the GOP’s fault, seems they thought this was great for them, no so much for the other side.
The problem with the idea of packing the Supreme court would turn out the same as the nuclear option, it would end up being used by the opposition to take away power from the ones trying to maintain it. If we look at history, the majority of justices are appointed by the GOP, even if the DNC somehow were able to get this done, it would not be long before we saw the court swing the other direction, then I promise the Liberals would be blaming this too on the right and demand this law they put in place be abolished.
What is most amazing is the Left’s reasoning for this, VOX gives these are great examples of why packing the court is such an excellent idea.
- In 2004, Hugo Chavez’s allies in the National Assembly of Venezuela expanded the Supreme Court from 20 members to 32 and packed it with Chavez loyalists.
- In 1946-47, Argentina’s populist president and former military coup conspirator Juan Perón successfully impeached four out of the country’s five Supreme Court justices in a bid to consolidate power.
- In 1989, Argentine President Carlos Menem, fearing Supreme Court opposition to his privatization schemes, expanded the court from five to nine members and packed it with sympathetic judges.
- In 2012, Juan Orlando Hernandez, then the president of Honduras’s National Congress and today the increasingly dictatorial country’s right-wing president, conspired to sack four of the five Supreme Court justices and replace them with his allies.
- As part of Viktor Orban’s rise to power as Hungary’s dictator, in 2010 he and his Fidesz party amended the rules of Supreme Court appointment so that the opposition no longer had to assent to nominees; in 2011 they expanded the number of judges from 11 to 15; in 2012 and 2013 they expanded terms on the bench from nine to 12 years and eliminated the 70-year age limit previously in place. These moves, together, resulted in 11 out of 15 judges being Fidesz loyalists.
- Poland’s authoritarian nationalist Law and Justice party in 2017 seized control over the Supreme Court by pushing legislation that gives the ruling party the ability to appoint new judges and the power to dismiss judges below a specific retirement age (which happens to disproportionately enable the dismissal of judges critical of the Law and Justice party). In the wake of massive public opposition, the president vetoed the legislation, only to accept a very similar bill months later. All this followed the party’s 2015 decision to not swear in judges appointed by their predecessors and to force a supermajority requirement on the court, effectively weakening it.
- Among many other attempts to weaken the judiciary, Turkey’s authoritarian President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, then the prime minister, in 2010 pushed through a referendum increasing the Constitutional Court’s size from 11 to 17 and enabling him and his loyalists to fill the new vacancies.
What is more amazing, VOX themselves acknowledge that this is how dictators change the laws, then later contradict themselves to push for this anyways.
We are at the point that the left sees that Kavanaugh is done, he is going to be voted in, so they are now looking at what will happen when Ginsberg and Breyer both in their 80’s, it is not inconceivable one may either step down or pass away before the 2020 elections, if Trump wins his reelection bid, you could see both seats vacated, at that point the only option the left will have is to pack the courts, I fully expect this to grow into a fever pitch when this comes up, while they can do nothing under Trump, they hope for a day when they can return to power and put this into motion.
Kavanaugh Is Not About #MeToo, It All About Control Of The High Court
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