In 1937, following a sweeping victory by Franklin Roosevelt and the Democrats in the 1936 elections, FDR formulated a plan that would bring the U.S. closer to a dictatorship than at any time in its history.
FDR proposed adding a Supreme Court Justice every time a sitting justice reached the age of 70 and had served 10 years on the high court. The reason for this "court-packing" scheme was blatant politics.
The Supreme Court struck down Roosevelt's New Deal legislation creating entities like the National Recovery Administration and the Agricultural Adjustment Act either unanimously or near-unanimously. FDR wanted to add up to six justices in the next few years to tilt the ideological balance of the court his way.
The bill never went anywhere, and Roosevelt lost a lot of support and a lot of political capital as a result of his proposed power grab.
“Congress and the people viewed FDR’s ill-considered proposal as an undemocratic power grab,” says Barbara A. Perry, director of presidential studies at the University of Virginia’s Miller Center. “The chief justice (Charles Evans Hughes) testified before Congress that the Court was up to date in its work, countering Roosevelt’s stated purpose that the old justices needed help with their caseload.”
Rep. Ron Wyden (D-Ore.) says he wants to "restore public confidence" in the Supreme Court by adding six justices and making other reforms in the nomination process for federal judges to make sure all the right sorts of people are elevated to the high court.
None of these crazy "original intenters" for the new, modern Supreme Court.
“It’s not an atomic secret that the process for selecting justices is politicized,” Wyden said. “You’ve got this thoroughly politicized process resulting in a Supreme Court that now frequently issues sweeping rulings to overturn laws and upend precedents. We are proposing a way to restore some balance between the three branches of government.”
Let me translate that for those who don't talk liberal-speak. When a liberal Supreme Court issues a ruling it's as close to the word of a god as you can get without actually coming from some god or another.
It's like a Clean Air Act or Clean Water Act regulation. Changing it is blasphemous. And if you're going to repeal or overturn it, eternal damnation awaits you.
And the "balance" among the three branches of government is out of whack because conservatives can impact the law and throw a monkey wrench into radical left plans to re-engineer society.
The bill’s most significant measure would increase the number of justices from nine to 15 over the course of 12 years. The staggered format over two or three administrations is aimed at diminishing the chance that one political party would pack the courts with its nominees.
During the rollout, each president would approve justices in the first and third year of their terms.
More problematic, the bill would require a two-thirds majority of the Supreme Court and Court of Appeals to overturn a law by Congress. This virtually destroys the Supreme Court's function as a brake on excesses by Congress.
Another power grab in Wyden's bill would be the addition of two federal circuit courts, adding more than 100 district court judges and 60 appellate judges. Leftist judges would be falling all over each other, looking for ways to get around the Constitution.
As an extra added intimidation factor, the IRS would be required to audit the tax returns of Supreme Court justices every year.
Each justice would be required to publicly release their opinions and disclose how they voted on issues considered on an emergency basis, sometimes referred to as the shadow docket. Such decisions, which have become more common and increasingly controversial in recent years, don’t identify how each justice voted.
The Supreme Court under this bill according to the left does not seem a place for liberty-loving judges to work. But it sounds ideal for sidelining conservative jurisprudence and tossing a wrecking ball at the Constitution.
