Op-Ed: Packing the court strikes out independent judiciary
Op-Ed:
Packing the court strikes out independent judiciary
By
Sen. Chuck Grassley
Former President Franklin Delano Roosevelt used his bully pulpit
to try to pack the Supreme Court. He struck out, and in the 1938 midterm
elections, his party lost 72 seats in the House of Representatives and seven
seats in the Senate. As they say, history repeats itself.
Perhaps that’s why Speaker Nancy
Pelosi poured cold water on
the partisan bill introduced this week by House Judiciary Chairman Jerry Nadler.
When asked about the court-packing bill, Pelosi said, “I don’t know that it’s a
good idea or a bad idea.”
President Joe
Biden knows.
In 1983, then-Sen. Biden called FDR’s court-packing effort “a
bonehead idea.” I agree with the 46th president. It is a bonehead idea to pack
the court. It’s a pure power grab that would incinerate public trust in our
institutions of government.
Having served on the Senate Judiciary Committee since 1981 and
as chairman for four of those years, I’ve spent decades in the trenches of
judicial-confirmation warfare. I’ve participated in 16 Supreme Court
confirmations and more than a thousand more to fill vacancies in the nation’s
lower courts.
Advice and consent by the Senate to serve lifetime appointments
in the federal judiciary give the people a constitutional check on those
selected to interpret the law of the land. Doing so while respecting the
independence of the federal judiciary helps preserve public confidence in our
institutions of government. The Supreme Court is the final word on matters
affecting the lives and livelihoods of people, from healthcare to taxes,
abortion, gun control, privacy, and voting laws.
Unfortunately, bare-knuckle politics took over the confirmation
process in 1987, when partisans succeeded in sabotaging Judge Robert Bork’s
nomination with a well-orchestrated slander campaign against him. Since then,
“Borking” a nominee made its way into the political playbook. Four years later,
people watched confirmation proceedings turn into daytime soap operas.
Then-Judge Clarence Thomas unflinchingly defended his reputation, calling
allegations made against him a “high-tech lynching.”
More recently, Senate confirmation hearings for Justice Brett
Kavanaugh devolved into an unprecedented attempted character assassination of a
nominee to the high court. As then-chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee,
I refused to cave to the mob and carried out the committee’s responsibilities to
vet the nominee thoroughly and fairly for a consequential lifetime appointment.
Emboldened by the 2020 elections and yet refusing to accept the
reality about those of 2016, liberals have their sights set on restructuring
the Supreme Court. Blinded by left-wing pressure to reshape the
United States, they view a 6-3 conservative majority as standing in their way,
so they want to pack the court while they can and add four justices to
rubber-stamp their radical plans. To put in perspective how extreme their proposal
is, consider the recent remarks of liberal Justice
Stephen Breyer and the late Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg against
the idea of adding seats to the Supreme Court.
Think about what that means. With decades of constitutional
scholarship and combined service on the federal judiciary, two liberal lions
agreed that packing the court would politicize it and undermine its
independence, impartiality, and integrity in the eyes of the people.
Scrapping the filibuster, packing the court, and hewing to an
ideology that’s out of sync with most people is bad policy and an electoral
mistake.
Chief Justice John Roberts recognized the importance of
impartiality in his confirmation hearings in 2005. He said, “Judges and
justices are servants of the law, not the other way around. Judges are like
umpires.”
Unfortunately, partisan lawmakers are swinging for the fences to
cement their radical agenda. Right
now, the Democrats control the White House and have a white-knuckled grip in
Congress, with a 50-50 split in the Senate and a razor-thin majority in the
House. The progressives on the far Left are impatient. They realize they won’t
get their way if centrists such as Sens. Joe Manchin and Kyrsten
Sinema stand their ground. So they want to change the rules.
But in judicial politics, changing the rules to get what you
want will backfire in the long run. Just ask former Sen. Harry Reid.
For now, Biden and Pelosi seem to have put court-packing on the
back burner. However, a broader messaging campaign is weaving its way through
academia, the states, and Congress to undermine the high court. Lawmakers this
week stood in front of the Supreme Court, sending a blatant signal to the nine
sitting justices. Across the land, scholars in their ivory towers are telling
states to ignore rulings by the high court. Well-funded activists are greasing
the wheels at the grassroots for poll-tested reforms such as “term limits” for
federal judges. That’s three strikes chipping away at our independent
judiciary.
Their power grab is way off base. Congress knows it. The
president knows it. And more importantly, the people know it. Roberts would
call that three strikes against an independent judiciary.
Chuck
Grassley, a Republican, is the senior senator from Iowa and the ranking member
of the Senate Judiciary Committee.
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