Fox Sunday<\/em>\u00a0venue. But neither could come up with straight answers to either the New York Times expose of Trump finances, or the President\u2019s health.\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n\nAnd the polls look terrible for Trump 2020.\u00a0\u00a0It\u2019s not just the \u201cblue wall\u201d states of Wisconsin, Michigan and Pennsylvania.\u00a0It\u2019s Ohio, North Carolina, Florida, and Arizona, and even Georgia and maybe Texas that are trending to Joe Biden.\u00a0\u00a0So Trump needs to change the subject \u2013 and \u201cpacking\u201d the Court might help.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Biden has a convoluted answer. The former Vice President said that, \u201cif he answers the question it will make it the lead story,\u201d so he refuses to answer.\u00a0\u00a0Biden wants to keep the focus on the President\u2019s COVID response.\u00a0\u00a0Anything else is \u201coff the subject\u201d as far as Democrats are concerned.\u00a0\u00a0But his ticket needs to come up with a better answer than, \u201cwe don\u2019t want to answer that question\u201d.\u00a0\u00a0So here\u2019s a look at Congress, the President and the Court throughout history.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Judges on the Bench<\/h3>\n\n\n\n
First of all, Congress, not the Courts or the President, establishes the number of judges at all levels of the Federal Court system. This includes the United States Supreme Court. The original Supreme Court in 1789 had six Justices. Eighteen years later that was increased to seven, then thirty years after than to nine. During the Civil War the number was briefly increased to ten, then right after the war shrunk back to seven. That shrinkage was to prevent President Andrew Johnson from appointing any Justices at all. With the election of Grant in 1869, Congress placed the number back at nine.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
It\u2019s been nine ever since.\u00a0\u00a0In 1937 Franklin Roosevelt proposed to add a Justice for every serving Justice over the age of seventy for a possible total of fifteen Justices.\u00a0\u00a0Congress didn\u2019t go for that, but strangely enough, the existing Justices changed. They began to find the New Deal legislation Constitutional, ones that they were previously ruled unconstitutional.\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0While no one admitted that Roosevelt\u2019s pressure impacted their decisions, the proof is in the results.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Trying to gain political control of the Courts isn\u2019t just at the Supreme Court level.\u00a0\u00a0The second President of the United States, John Adams, was a Federalist.\u00a0\u00a0He was defeated for a second term in office by Thomas Jefferson, of the opposing Democratic-Republicans.\u00a0\u00a0In the months before Jefferson was inaugurated, Adams made a concerted effort to place as many Federalist into lifetime judicial positions as possible.\u00a0\u00a0One of those Federalist Judges was the Chief Justice John Marshall, but another created the famous Supreme Court case of Marbury v Madison, the last of the \u201cmidnight judges\u201d.\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n\n
It is Politics<\/h3>\n\n\n\n
So seeing the Courts as an institution immune to political influence or control is na\u00efve. It\u2019s been happening since the founding of the Republic. In recent years, the Federalist Society, an organization of judges, attorneys, law schools and students, has made it their goal to gain a majority on the Supreme Court. They\u2019ve been working towards that goal since their founding thirty-eight years ago. Today five members of the Supreme Court, including Chief Justice Roberts, are Federalist Society adherents.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Say what you want about Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell and President Trump: they have had a single-minded focus when it comes to packing the present Judiciary with Federalist Society members. There are a total of 870 Federal judgeships in the Court System. In the past three and a half years, Trump and McConnell have appointed 206 judges, almost a quarter of the Judiciary. That includes 151 District Judges, 53 Appellate Court positions, and, of course two (soon to be three) Supreme Court Justices. All of those appointments are lifetime positions.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
No one is talking about how all of those appointments, and particularly those at the Appellate level, will dramatically alter the Federal Courts interpretation of law. If Democrats get the opportunity in 2021 to control the Congress and the Presidency, they might look to not only expand the number of Supreme Court Justices, but also the number of Appellate Court positions so they can \u201clevel\u201d the field.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Biden\u2019s Answer<\/h3>\n\n\n\n
So what should the \u201cBiden Court Packing\u201d answer be? I think he should say the following:<\/p>\n\n\n\n
First \u2013 Senator McConnell set the rules in 2016 \u2013 no Supreme Court appointments in an election year. Whether that \u201crule\u201d was good or bad is irrelevant, it\u2019s the rule he set and we should expect him to honor his own rule, and not vote on a Supreme Court nominee until after the inauguration in 2021.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Second \u2013 If Senator McConnell decides to flaunt his own rule it\u2019s obvious he has no concerns about the \u201cnorms\u201d for judicial appointments. \u201cNorms\u201d are only fair if both sides follow them, so if McConnell brings a Supreme Court nomination to a vote, then those norms don\u2019t apply.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Third \u2013 Everything after that is hypothetical.\u00a0\u00a0What happens next can only be answered after the real actions of Senator McConnell.\u00a0\u00a0So if McConnell doesn\u2019t want a Congress in the future to contemplate expanding the Courts, he should follow the rules that he set in 2016.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Biden and Democrats should place the decision right where it belongs: with the Republican Senator from Kentucky who is done everything he can to \u201cpack\u201d the Courts with his own ideology. If McConnell proceeds with the Barrett nomination, then he is opening the door to further politicization of the Court. Biden isn\u2019t the \u201cCourt Packer\u201d (yet), McConnell is. And if one Party is doing the packing, it shouldn\u2019t surprise anyone that the other Party will contemplate it. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u00a0It\u2019s nothing new.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
The Question The Republicans screamed their talking point from Sunday\u2019s news shows. \u201cJoe Biden won\u2019t answer the question!!!! He won\u2019t say if he\u2019ll \u2018pack\u2019 the Supreme Court!\u201d You can\u2019t blame them for trying to change the conversation.\u00a0\u00a0There\u2019s not a whole lot of good news coming from the Trump camp.\u00a0\u00a0Son Eric had a disastrous interview on\u00a0ABC, coming … Continue reading “Packing the Courts”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"nf_dc_page":"","om_disable_all_campaigns":false,"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-3348","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"yoast_head":"\nPacking the Courts : Our America - Essays on Politics and American Life<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"The Trump campaign demands that Biden answer the question: will he "pack" the Courts. 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