President Joe Biden has long waffled on the question of whether he supports Democrat calls to pack the Supreme Court with liberal justices, but on Tuesday, he did offer some insight of his current stance on the panel, suggesting that some of its recent decisions have rendered it akin to an “advocacy group,” as the Boston Globe reports.
The president’s remarks were made as part of an online fundraiser for Rep. Lisa Blunt Rochester (D-DE), as he described what he sees as the extreme importance of the midterm contests.
Biden blasts SCOTUS
In presenting his less-than-favorable view of some of the court’s latest rulings, Biden explained, “So, I view this…off-year election as one of the most important elections that I’ve been engaged in, because a lot can change because the institutions have changed.”
“The Supreme Court is more of an advocacy group these days than it is…evenhanded,” Biden alleged.
As the Globe noted, Biden’s take was likely, in large part, the result of the high court’s decision in the case of Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization, in which it overturned the landmark abortion ruling of Roe v. Wade.
The commander in chief’s opinion of the court, however, stands in contrast to that of Chief Justice John Roberts, who pointed out last month, according to the Globe, “You don’t want the political branches telling you what the law is, and you don’t want public opinion to be the guide about what the appropriate decision is.”
White House explains
On Wednesday, White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre was asked to clarify or expand Biden’s suggestion that the court has frequently acted out of political or ideological motivation rather than impartially interpreting the law.
According to the Washington Examiner, Jean-Pierre declared that Biden’s statements “were based on his respect for the institution as someone who spent decades working to strengthen the institution and our courts at large.”
“He was a former Senate Judiciary Committee chair, so the president believes the Supreme Court must be nonpartisan,” Jean-Pierre added.”
“Ever since the Dobbs decision, you’ve heard from the president directly,” the press secretary continued. “He expressed his deep concern that this was an extreme and radical decision based on throwing out many decades of precedent.”
Thwarted ambitions
Democrat activist groups and far-left legislators such as Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-MA) have continued to argue for an expansion of the Supreme Court as a means to load the panel with liberal justices ever since former President Donald Trump succeeded in putting three justices on the bench during his term.
Fortunately, the commission Biden himself established to study the idea rejected the notion of court packing late last year, and with the composition of Congress likely to change in pivotal ways come November, liberal outrage over Dobbs is proving insufficient to force the radical – and indeed partisan – reshaping of the Supreme Court to which Democrats, unsurprisingly, feel so entitled.