Should more justices be added to the Supreme Court bench? Nancy Pelosi wants to “take a look and see.”
According to Breitbart, the House speaker and California Democrat announced Monday that she’s open to the idea of court-packing — and “maybe we need more district courts as well,” she suggested.
Fundamental changes
The idea of court-packing has been on Democrats’ minds since President Donald Trump first revealed that he planned to nominate Amy Coney Barrett to the Supreme Court. Barrett was confirmed earlier this week, and now, it seems Dems are out for blood.
Speaking with MSNBC’s All In on Monday, Pelosi seemed to be warming up to what was once a radical idea.
“I think that Joe Biden has given us a good path,” the House speaker said, according to Breitbart. She was apparently referring to a proposal put forth by the Democrat presidential hopeful to set up a commission that would study expanding the nation’s highest court, which currently has nine justices.
In an interview with 60 Minutes, Biden said he would “put together a national commission, a bipartisan commission of scholars, constitutional scholars, Democrats, Republicans, liberals, conservatives.”
“I will ask them to, over 180 days, come back to me with recommendations as to how to reform the court system because it’s getting out of whack,” he explained, according to Fox News.
It’s an idea George Washington University constitutional law professor Jonathan Turley called “alarming,” as Fox reported separately. “What Vice President Biden is referring to is a series of proposals put out by professors to fundamentally change the Supreme Court and some of them are quite wacky,” he said. “What this commission seems designed to do is to give a form of enablement to Vice President Biden and the Democrats… It’s like kids saying, ‘Step over this lie and if you do, I have a right to fight you.'”
“Should we expand the court?”
Pelosi, on the other hand, seems to be all for Biden’s plan. “He’s going to have something that people can understand why this is important,” the long-time San Francisco congresswoman said of the former vice president.
She also explained Monday why it might be a good idea to look into expanding the high court. “In 1876, there were nine justices on the court,” she said, according to Breitbart. “Our population has grown enormously since then. Should we expand the court? Well, let’s take a look and see.”
Pelosi went on: “And that relates to the nine district courts, maybe we need more district courts as well. And one other thing we need, we need for these justices to disclose their holdings.”
It wasn’t immediately clear what the House speaker had in mind when she spoke of “nine district courts,” as the United States currently has 94 federal districts and 12 circuits.
The post Pelosi opens door to court-packing: 'Let's take a look and see' first appeared on Conservative Institute.
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