Enraged by U.S. Supreme Court decisions that didn’t go their way, radicals are attacking the legitimacy of the Court with proposals that threaten the separation of powers, our civil liberties and the foundations of our constitutional republic.
This new court “reform” plan is just the latest desperate attack on the Court by liberals determined to impose their agenda on Americans by any means necessary. While current proposals like term limits for the longest-serving justices and an imposed code of ethics threaten the Constitution and the separation of powers, the far left is demanding that Court be packed with additional liberal justices. The proposal only takes a majority vote and the signature of the President.
The new scheme seeks to subvert the legitimacy of the Supreme Court because it contains a majority of justices committed to the Constitution and originalism. If this coup succeeds, the rule of law will be over as the judiciary will become little more than a political tool of whomever holds power.
Term limits would be unconstitutional and also are a bad idea, doing great harm to the independence of the judiciary which the Founders were trying to ensure. The term limits is pure partisanship, designed to target the most conservative Justices, Clarence Thomas and Samuel Alito, in an act of pure political revenge. If adopted, the judiciary will no longer be a safeguard of our civil liberties but will instead be little more than a political tool used to crush the freedom of Americans.
So-called “ethics reform” isn’t about accountability, transparency, or any other euphemism. It is about giving those angry at decisions based on the actual text of the Constitution the power to punish justices by subjecting them to unrelenting investigations and fabricated scandals.
Nearly a century ago, President Franklin D. Roosevelt also sought to reform the Supreme Court with through expanding the court. He nearly succeeded. Ironically, one of President Roosevelt’s earliest and most ardent supporters, Senator Burton Wheeler of Montana, took to the Senate floor to excoriate the plan. In an impassioned speech, Senator Wheeler cautioned:
“Create now a political court to echo the ideas of the Executive and you have created a weapon. A weapon which, in the hands of another President in times of war or other hysteria, could well be an instrument of destruction. A weapon that can cut down those guaranties of liberty written into your great document by the blood of your forefathers . . .”
In other words, changing the Supreme Court and converting it into a subsidiary of either other branch would destroy our constitutional order.
If proponents of court reform are as concerned as they claim about “saving our democracy,” then their support for judicial independence should be unwavering. Yet, their proposal would convert an otherwise independent branch of our government into yet another political tool to be sharpened against the civil rights of the American people.
As Alexander Hamilton wrote in Federalist No. 78, “liberty can have nothing to fear from the judiciary alone but would have everything to fear from its union with either of the other departments.”
An independent judiciary is an essential check on the power of the executive and legislative branches and the fleeting political whims of the culture. Efforts to politicize that branch of government are a grave error and should be soundly rejected.
Kelly Shackelford is President, CEO, and Chief Counsel for First Liberty Institute, a nonprofit law firm dedicated to defending religious freedom for all.
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