Several US Senators and Representatives have called on Congress to “expand the court,” also known as court-packing, in the wake of the leaked initial draft majority opinion on Roe v. Wade.
“End the filibuster. Codify #RoeVWade with a national law protecting abortion rights. Expand the Supreme Court. Stop this horrifying injustice in its tracks,” tweets Democrat Senator Elizabeth Warren.
According to Senator Ed Markey, “A stolen, illegitimate, and far-right Supreme Court majority appears set to destroy the right to abortion, an essential right which protects the health, safety, and freedom of millions of Americans. There is no other recourse. We must expand the court.”
Representative Ilhan Omar, of course, agrees, tweeting, “Overturning Roe would put the lives of women across the country at risk. It would fly in the face of decades of precedent and the overwhelming majority of public opinion. And they will not stop here. Expand the court.”
Other less notable candidates for Congress have also latched onto the proposal, such as Morgan Harper, Victoria Virasingh, Nina Turner, and Melanie D’Arrigo.
All also appear to favour codifying Roe v. Wade into law, ensuring on-demand abortion remains a federal right long into the future.
Court-packing is when a government expands the number of eligible justices to achieve autocratic rule.
There’s technically nothing in the Constitution to prevent expanding SCOTUS, either. But Presidents have historically been opposed to court-packing as it creates a precedent for the next government to do the same, completely undermining the judiciary in America.
Ultimately, it’s up to Congress to decide whether to expand the Supreme Court.
As Vox noted, the last time court-packing was seriously considered was under Franklin Roosevelt in 1937.
“Roosevelt’s plan to increase the Court’s size — which would have allowed him as many as six new justices, for a 9-6 majority for the New Deal on a 15-member court — ultimately failed in the Senate, but not before successfully pressuring Justice Owen Roberts to switch his alignment from the Court’s conservatives to the liberals and rule for the constitutionality of minimum wage laws and the National Labor Relations Act.”
“If calls for court-packing grow loud enough, you could see something similar happen on the current Court, if some of the Republican-appointed justices like John Roberts or Brett Kavanaugh start moderating their decisions to prevent the radical disruption of the Court by Democrats who fear being locked out of policy influence for a generation.”
As reported by The Counter Signal, calls to pack the Supreme Court began almost immediately after someone leaked a SCOTUS initial draft majority opinion to overturn Roe v. Wade to Politico.
“We hold that Roe and Casey must be overruled,” wrote Justice Samuel Alito in the leaked draft. “It is time to heed the Constitution and return the issue of abortion to the people’s elected representatives.”
“…. Roe was egregiously wrong from the start. Its reasoning was exceptionally weak, and the decision has had damaging consequences. And far from bringing about a national settlement of the abortion issue, Roe and Casey have enflamed debate and deepened division.”
The justices who currently support striking down Roe v. Wade and making abortion a state issue are Justice Alito, Justice Thomas, Justice Barrett, Justice Kavanaugh, and Justice Gorsuch, with Justice Roberts being a flip vote and the three Democrat Justices opposing the overruling.
As many have pointed out, leaking a draft of a SCOTUS vote is unprecedented and appears to be a clear attempt to instigate left-wing riots across the country to pressure justices not to overturn Roe v. Wade.
Other possible motivations are to create a movement to codify abortion into law, galvanize support for the Democrats during the mid-terms by exasperating a wedge issue, and, as mentioned, pack the court to make as many left-wing policies the law of the land as possible.
