Democrats Reportedly Prepping Bill To Fundamentally Change SCOTUS in a Radical Way
The country has seen the worst from Democrats since President Donald Trump was elected in 2016.
But the current Supreme Court battle to fill the seat vacated by late Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg has them desperate, and there is no end to their willingness to violate long-held mores regarding civility and governance.
That includes threatening to pack the high court, allot themselves four additional senators by giving statehood to Washington, D.C., and Puerto Rico and upend the Supreme Court by limiting terms for justices.
On Thursday, Reuters reported that House Democrats plan to introduce legislation next week that, if passed, would limit the tenure of each justice to only 18 years.
Currently, high court justices, like all federal court judges, enjoy lifetime appointments.
According to the wire service, Democrats claim that reducing terms for justices will end partisan quarrels about vacancies and will preserve the legitimacy of the court.
Of course, we know that simply isn’t true, as the issue of lifetime appointments for federal judges was never an issue until Democrats found themselves staring down the barrel last Friday of a potential 6-3 conservative majority with the death of Ginsburg.
Reuters reported that under the House Democrats’ plan, every president would nominate two justices per term, and all current justices would be grandfathered in to their lifetime appointments.
Rep. Joe Kennedy III of Massachusetts, who threatened on Twitter last week that his party would pack the courts of Republicans dared do their jobs by filling the seat vacated by Ginsburg, will introduce the proposal, along with Reps. Don Beyer of Virginia and Ro Khanna of California.
If he holds a vote in 2020, we pack the court in 2021.
It’s that simple.
— Rep. Joe Kennedy III (@RepJoeKennedy) September 19, 2020
The appropriately named Supreme Court Term Limits and Regular Appointments Act will unify the country, according to Khanna.
“It would save the country a lot of agony and help lower the temperature over fights for the court that go to the fault lines of cultural issues and is one of the primary things tearing at our social fabric,” the California Democrat said.
Of course, this is just the latest desperate act from Democrats in a turbulent week that has seen them threaten everything from impeachment to packing the courts.
The proposal has a tone that seems to surrender to the fact that they are more or less powerless on the issue of the judiciary until January, and that’s assuming they take the Senate, the White House or both.
Current polling doesn’t seem to indicate those scenarios are anything to bank their hopes on.
Even if Democrats could limit justices to 18-year terms, they would have to amend the Constitution to do so.
Lifetime appointments for justices help them avoid becoming involved in petty partisan fights — like the ones Democrats are always engaged in — and allows them to make rulings without outside pressure.
As the Senate Judiciary Committee website notes, “Like all Federal judges, Supreme Court Justices serve lifetime appointments on the Court, in accordance with Article III of the United States Constitution.”
With how Democrats have behaved in recent years, there is little chance two-thirds of both houses of Congress would agree to amend the Constitution.
It’s even less likely that the requisite 34 states would ratify such a radical and politically transparent proposal.
Democrats are desperate to prevent Trump from replacing Ginsburg with a justice who wouldn’t legislate from the bench, and they’re willing to violate any norm to do so — apparently without a second thought.
The measure is sure to go nowhere in the short term, but it does give Americans further insight into their rabid desperation.
As the party of Jim Crow and slavery, Democrats have always viewed the Constitution as something to circumvent.
Unfortunately for those in the House, they’d need a strong majority to amend a document which they have proven for years they abhor.
Truth and Accuracy
We are committed to truth and accuracy in all of our journalism. Read our editorial standards.
