{"id":89638,"date":"2020-10-15T03:06:57","date_gmt":"2020-10-15T00:06:57","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/en.buradabiliyorum.com\/why-joe-bidens-dodge-on-court-packing-really-matters\/"},"modified":"2020-10-15T03:06:57","modified_gmt":"2020-10-15T00:06:57","slug":"why-joe-bidens-dodge-on-court-packing-really-matters","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/why-joe-bidens-dodge-on-court-packing-really-matters\/","title":{"rendered":"#Why Joe Biden\u2019s dodge on court-packing really matters"},"content":{"rendered":"

“#Why Joe Biden\u2019s dodge on court-packing really matters<\/strong>”
\n<\/p>\n

\n Judging from their grandstanding during Amy Coney Barrett\u2019s confirmation hearing, Democrats think the composition of the Supreme Court is a big issue in next month\u2019s presidential election. Yet evidently, it isn\u2019t big enough for their candidates to clearly tell voters whether they favor expanding the court to accommodate their policy preferences.<\/p>\n

\u201cYou\u2019ll know my opinion of court-packing when the election is over,\u201d Joe Biden told reporters last week. More recently, the ex-veep said, \u201cI\u2019m not a fan\u201d of court-packing, while his running mate, Kamala Harris, continues to avoid giving her opinion on the matter. Asked by Fox News<\/a> Tuesday if she, too, isn\u2019t a fan, she refused to answer.<\/p>\n

Biden himself explained the threat posed by court-packing as a senator in 1983. \u201cIt was a bonehead idea,\u201d he said, referring to President Franklin D. Roosevelt\u2019s 1937 plan to make the high court more receptive to his New Deal agenda through legislation that would have authorized him to app<\/a>oint up to six additional justices.<\/p>\n

That plan \u201cviolated no law,\u201d Biden noted. Still, \u201cit was a terrible, terrible mistake to make, and it put in question for an entire decade the independence\u201d of the Supremes.<\/p>\n

Last year, Biden was still opposed to FDR-style bullying. \u201cI\u2019m not prepared to go on and try to pack the court, because we\u2019ll live to rue the day,\u201d he told Iowa Starting Line in July 2019.<\/p>\n

Biden was equally firm during a Democratic presidential debate three months later. \u201cI would not get into court-packing,\u201d he said. \u201cWe begin to lose any credibility the court has at all.\u201d As recently as January, Biden told The New York Times he had no judicial-reform plans.<\/p>\n

But as court-packing gained favor among Democrats outraged by Senate Republicans\u2019 decision to keep Antonin Scalia\u2019s seat open for Neil Gorsuch and their swift action to replace Ruth Bader Ginsburg, Biden was suddenly silent. He conspicuously refused to rule out court-packing during his debate with President Trump last month, and so did Harris during her debate with Vice President Mike Pence last week.<\/p>\n

It isn\u2019t as if Democratic anger at Republicans\u2019 hardball tactics makes the lessons of FDR\u2019s failed bid to expand the court less salient. Roosevelt\u2019s plan was never popular with voters, and it provoked intense \u00adopposition from Democrats, who controlled the House and Senate, as well as Republicans.<\/p>\n

House Judiciary Committee Chairman Hatton Sumners refused to back the president\u2019s bill. Roosevelt\u2019s own vice president, John Nance Garner, was against it.<\/p>\n

The Senate Judiciary Committee issued an adverse report on FDR\u2019s plan that said it \u201cdoes not accomplish any one of the objectives for which it was originally offered\u201d and \u201cviolates all precedents in the history of our government.\u201d The committee called the bill \u201ca dangerous precedent\u201d that \u201cwould undermine the independence of the courts,\u201d \u00adviolate \u201cthe spirit of the American Constitution,\u201d subvert \u201cthe rights of individuals and weaken \u201cthe protection our constitutional system gives to minorities.\u201d<\/p>\n

FDR eventually reshaped the \u00adSupreme Court in the usual way, filling eight vacant seats. But he paid a huge political cost by trying to jump the gun.<\/p>\n

\u201cWhen the dust settled, FDR had suffered a humiliating political \u00addefeat,\u201d notes historian Michael Parrish. \u201cThe protracted legislative battle over the court-packing bill blunted the momentum for additional reforms, divided the New Deal coalition, squandered the political advantage Roosevelt had gained in the 1936 elections and gave fresh ammunition to those who accused him of dictatorship, tyranny and fascism.\u201d<\/p>\n

Biden is candid about the reason for his reticence about emulating FDR. \u201cIt\u2019s a great question,\u201d he conceded last week, \u201cand I don\u2019t blame you for asking it. But you know, the moment I answer that question, the headline in every one of your papers will be about that (instead of) focusing on what\u2019s happening now.\u201d<\/p>\n

What\u2019s happening now, of course, is a decision about whether to replace Trump with Biden. Voters deserve to know whether Team Biden-Harris decisively rules out FDR\u2019s \u201cbonehead idea.\u201d<\/p>\n

Twitter<\/a>: @JacobSullum <\/em>\n <\/div>\n

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Source<\/a><\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

“#Why Joe Biden\u2019s dodge on court-packing really matters” Judging from their grandstanding during Amy Coney Barrett\u2019s confirmation hearing, Democrats think the composition of the Supreme Court is a big issue in next month\u2019s presidential election. Yet evidently, it isn\u2019t big enough for their candidates to clearly tell voters whether they favor expanding the court to…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":89639,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"fifu_image_url":"https:\/\/nypost.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/2\/2020\/10\/HARRIS_VP_PICK.jpg?quality=90&strip=all&w=1200","fifu_image_alt":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[70897],"tags":[75696,71982,71434,10701,71404],"class_list":["post-89638","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-news","tag-10-14-20","tag-amy-coney-barrett","tag-courts","tag-democrats","tag-supreme-court"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/89638","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=89638"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/89638\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/89639"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=89638"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=89638"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=89638"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}