Eighty years ago today, President Franklin Roosevelt unveiled a radical plan to “pack” the Supreme Court with his own picks by expanding it to up to 15 justices. And you thought today’s battles over the court were something new under the sun?
FDR claimed his proposal was all in the name of judicial efficiency, but it followed a series of rulings gutting much of his early New Deal program. The real point was to install a court majority to do his bidding.
In the end, FDR’s effort failed, after a revolt by many Democrats, including his own vice president, John Nance Garner. Except that in one sense, it succeeded — as Justice Owen Roberts seemed to move closer to giving the president what he wanted.
Then, too, another “conservative” justice retired at year’s end, allowing FDR to begin shifting the court his way without getting heavy-handed.
The modern court wars date to the late 1960s, when President Richard Nixon moved to reverse the hard-left legacy of the Earl Warren court — and progressives began fighting ever harder to ensure a permanent majority friendly to their goals.
Which is precisely what they’re doing now with their hysterical effort to block the nomination of the eminently qualified Neil Gorsuch to a seat on the court.
Over nearly half a century, Democrats have managed to block several conservative nominees on the grounds of alleged extremism, often using the most vicious tactics imaginable.
Indeed, Dems call nearly every Republican nominee “extremist” and “out of the mainstream,” the epithets they’re applying now to Gorsuch. (Not so oddly, it seems no Democratic nominee has ever been too extreme a liberal.)
As Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell reminded us in an op-ed piece in The Washington Post, Gerald Ford’s moderate nominee John Paul Stevens was called “anti-woman.” Anthony Kennedy, nominated by Ronald Reagan and now the court’s swing vote, was called unqualified.
And George H.W. Bush’s selection of David Souter, who became a reliable liberal on the court, was called a threat to minorities.
Proving, as McConnell said, that no matter who a Republican president nominates, Democrats say the same things about them.
President Obama’s strongly liberal nominees, in sharp comparison, were all confirmed with but a handful of Republican dissenters.
Yes, the GOP refused to even consider Merrick Garland, Obama’s pick for the Scalia seat last year. But McConnell was simply applying the rule that Schumer and then-Sen. Joe Biden had advocated when Democrats ran the Senate at the end of the Bush administration: No high-court confirmations in a president’s last year.
Now Dems have started lining up to oppose Gorsuch — although then-Sens. Barack Obama, Hillary Clinton, Joe Biden, John Kerry and Chuck Schumer all voted to confirm him in 2006 for the US Court of Appeals.
Democrats are even digging into his high-school and college record for something to use against him. (Sadly for them, that “Fascism Forever Club” turned out to be a yearbook joke.)
Long after FDR, Democrats are still determined to pack the Supreme Court in their favor.
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