The Democrats’ plan to stack the Supreme Court just gained a surprising opponent.
Despite her history of taking liberal positions on some of the most controversial issues to face the court, Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg has formally come out against adding additional justices, arguing that it would make the court look “partisan.”
“A good number”
The 86-year-old justice made her position known in an interview with National Public Radio (NPR) on Tuesday.
“Nine seems to be a good number,” she said, referring to the court’s current lineup. “It’s been that way for a long time.”
Ginsburg went on to outline some of the measures that were put in place in an effort to keep the court non-partisan, such as lifetime tenure for justices. She believes that this vital image of impartiality would be destroyed should expansion take place.
“If anything would make the court look partisan,” she said, “it would be that — one side saying, ‘When we’re in power, we’re going to enlarge the number of judges, so we would have more people who would vote the way we want them to.'”
FDR’s bad idea
To support her position, Ginsburg referenced what happened under President Franklin Roosevelt in the 1930s.
“I think it was a bad idea when President Franklin Roosevelt tried to pack the court,” she said.
Roosevelt tried to do so for the same reason as today’s Democrats: he wasn’t getting what he wanted. At the time, Roosevelt was attempting to get his New Deal signed into law, but the Supreme Court kept finding parts of it unconstitutional, Breitbart reports.
To solve this problem, FDR attempted to pack the Supreme Court, but ultimately failed. In the next elections, in 1938, Democrats suffered a heavy defeat, with massive losses in Congress.
What now for Dems?
The push to expand the Supreme Court has gained the support of many of the Democrats looking to win the White House in 2020. South Bend, Indiana Mayor Pete Buttigieg, Sen. Elizabeth Warren (MA), Sen. Kamala Harris (CA), and Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand (NY) have all expressed their willingness to change the makeup of the high court in order make their agendas easier to accomplish.
Meanwhile, Ginsburg is looked up to as a leader among leftists, particularly over her fights for the rights of women and other disadvantaged groups. So what’s going to give? Is the new radical left going to drop their plans — or Ginsburg?