Former AG Eric Holder pushed Democrats this Monday to pack the SCOTUS in response to what he says is a crisis of “legitimacy” resulting from the conservative majority.
Packing the Supreme Court would require passing of new laws to add seats to the judicial body, followed up by using Democrats’ Senate majority to fill the seats with liberals.
Holder was speaking to the audience of a virtual event held by the Brookings Institution on court reform.
Liberals have demonstrated great desire to change the judicial system ever since Trump put more conservatives on the Supreme Court bench and other courts throughout the nation.
Holder started his speech with “three facts.” First, he claimed, “Democrats are not comfortable with the attainment and exercise of power.” Republicans, he claimed, were comfortable with those things.
Second, he went on to say that the Supreme Court had been “political bodies.”
And finally, he claimed the court had by and large protected the status quo with its rulings, “sometimes in a way that is harmful to our founder’s intentions.”
He claimed the courts were stacked with “people who routinely reach rulings based upon their stunted mindsets.”
The appointments by Trump, Holder said, had “given doubt” about the independence of the judicial system. (He did not mention that Trump’s appointees blocked his election challenges.)
Holder claimed that Mitch McConnell had refused to confirm Merrick Garland to the SCOTUS by using a justification invented out of “thin air” — ignoring the fact that they referenced the “Biden rule” which was once proposed by Biden himself, under which he stated presidents should not make appointments during the middle of an election year.
If Garland’s confirmation had gone through, we would have had a liberal court with four years of “progressive” outcomes. He claimed Republicans broke their own rule during the confirmation of Barrett last year.
Therefore, Holder added, Progressives “must utilize the power we currently have.” He said: “I think it is totally right to add more seats to the SCOTUS, as our response to what has happened during these past three years.”
Holder also agreed with the idea of changing the terms of Supreme Court justices from lifetime terms to 18 year terms. He also supported a minimum age of 50 years old for judges, and stated there should be more diversity as well.
President Joe Biden did not take a position on packing the Supreme Court during the election, saying he would have a commission look into the issue during his first six months in office. Both political parties have refused expanding the nation’s highest court for over 100 years.
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