ANALYSIS: TRUE. Biden’s Latest Court-Packing Move Should Forever Dispel the ‘Moderate’ Label.
This move may seem moderate. After all, Biden didn’t just immediately try to pack the Court. He ordered a commission to compile arguments “for and against Supreme Court reform.” Yet the commission’s members tilt significantly to the legal and political Left, as The Wall Street Journal editorial board explained.
Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) warned that Biden’s “faux-academic study” is a “direct assault on our nation’s independent judiciary.”
“So anyone who was surprised by the creation of a commission on packing the Supreme Court simply hasn’t been paying attention,” McConnell said. “This faux-academic study of a nonexistent problem fits squarely within liberals’ years-ling campaign to politicize the court, intimidate its members and subvert its independence.”
Superficially, it seems that Trump has successfully gotten conservatives confirmed to the Supreme Court. In reality, however, Trump selected justices who would apply the clear meaning of the Constitution and the laws passed by Congress, as understood at the time. Trump did not seek out activist justices who would write conservative ideas into the Constitution — that’s exactly the kind of activism Trump and his allies sought to prevent.
Democrats, however, see the Supreme Court as a kind of super-legislature, using the Constitution as a tool to drag history forward. They look back on Roe v. Wade (1973) — which struck down state laws on abortion — and Obergefell v. Hodges (2015) — which unilaterally redefined marriage — as positive steps toward progress rather than gross abuses of the Supreme Court’s power. Democrats supported the Court inventing new “rights” out of whole cloth because those rights involved abortion and same-sex marriage. The end justified the extremely unrepresentative means.
Flashback: Biden says voters ‘don’t deserve’ [to know] his stance on packing Supreme Court.