Washington – New Campaign Seeks Support For Expanded Supreme Court

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    In this Oct. 5, 2018 photo the U. S. Supreme Court building stands quietly before dawn in Washington.  (AP Photo/J. David Ake)Washington – A couple of liberal Harvard law professors are lending their name to a new campaign to build support for expanding the Supreme Court by four justices in 2021.

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    The campaign, calling itself the 1.20.21 Project and being launched Wednesday, also wants to increase the size of the lower federal courts to counteract what it terms “Republican obstruction, theft and procedural abuse” of the federal judiciary. This includes the recent near party-line confirmation of Justice Brett Kavanaugh that cemented a conservative majority on the Supreme Court.

    It is premised on Democratic victories in next month’s elections and the 2020 presidential contest that could leave Democrats in charge of Congress and the White House in 2021, a possibility but by no means a sure thing. Additional justices nominated by a Democrat could change the court’s ideological direction.

    Harvard professors Mark Tushnet and Laurence Tribe are joining an effort being led by political scientist Aaron Belkin. He was a prominent advocate for repealing the “don’t ask, don’t tell” policy that prohibited LGBT people from serving openly in the military.

    The Kavanaugh confirmation was the culmination of a process that started with Republicans blocking many of President Barack Obama’s nominees to lower courts and then refusing to consider his Supreme Court nomination of Judge Merrick Garland in 2016, Belkin said. President Donald Trump’s victory in November 2016 allowed him to fill the high court vacancy with Justice Neil Gorsuch.

    Tribe sought to distinguish the new campaign from President Franklin Roosevelt’s failed plan to expand the Supreme Court to 15 justices and pack it with his nominees in 1937.

    Roosevelt was unhappy with high court decisions that were blocking New Deal legislation, but the new push for a larger court stems from Republican actions, not the court’s decisions, Tribe said.

    “The time is overdue for a seriously considered plan of action by those of us who believe that McConnell Republicans, abetted by and abetting the Trump Movement, have prioritized the expansion of their own power over the safeguarding of American democracy and the protection of the most vulnerable among us,” Tribe said.

    The size of the Supreme Court varied during its first 80 years from a low of six at the time the Constitution took effect in 1789 to a high of 10 during the Civil War. The current tally of nine justices was set in an 1869 law.


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    5 Comments
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    lazy-boy
    Active Member
    lazy-boy
    5 years ago

    the hatred that the loonie liberal left has for the conservatives is without a doubt beyond anything extreme we have ever seen in the USA before.

    such hatred they have of conservatives! they want to impeach Trump! They accuse him with lies of such BS! now they want to cancel the conservative seating on the supreme court!

    the liberals have sunk to a new low in their desperation to wait for two more years for another election.

    Shlomo-1
    Shlomo-1
    5 years ago

    Silly.
    Expand the court now, they get more Trump appointees.
    How will this fix the problem?

    5 years ago

    Liberal sore losers

    5 years ago

    It is the Democrats that want to change the rules. They have done things like this before not-so-openly. Certain Democrat presidents of the United States in the past had twisted the Supreme Court’s arms in order to get rulings in their own favour by threatening (when they had a Democrat majority in Congress) to increase the number of judges on the court and stack the new ones with their own chosen candidates.

    Now these guys are doing it openly. So now it is possible that some time in the future the Republicans may increase the number of judges to stack the court with its own choices, but the hypocrites the Democrats will scream murder about the breaking of the rules.

    5 years ago

    “The Kavanaugh confirmation was the culmination of a process that started with Republicans blocking many of President Barack Obama’s nominees “

    Are we that stupid? It started LONG before that. It was Senator Obama and his confederates who had previously blocked Republican nominations to various courts. That included blocking from promotion a Black female judge who grew up in poverty and pulled herself up by her own bootstraps to go trough law school and gain a (lower court) position as judge. And the reason they gave for blocking was pure politics.