The future of the Supreme Court is on the ballot in November
:AS I1 721 Sen ate Minority eader &harles Schumer, 1. ., is correct ly under fire for threatening Supreme &ourt -ustices 1eil orsuch and rett .ava naugh. ut what did Schumer re ally mean when, on :ednesday, he warned the justices you won’t know what hit you if they vote the wrong way on an abortion case
ere is what Schum er said I want to tell you, orsuch I want to tell you, .avanaugh ou have re leased the whirlwind, and you will pay the price. ou won’t know what hit you if you go forward with these awful decisions. 7hat drew a rare rebuke from &hief -ustice -ohn 5oberts -r., who issued a statement declaring that threatening statements of this sort from the highest levels of government are not only inappropriate, they are dangerous.
At first, Schumer refused to apologi e but rather said through a spokesman that he was making a reference to the political price 5epub licans will pay for putting them on the court. 1o, he wasn’t. e didn’t say 5e publicans will pay the price or that 5epublicans won’t know what hit you. e directed those threats sTuarely at the two justices. 2n 7hursday, Schumer said, I shouldn’t have used the words I did, but in no way was I making a threat. 2f course he was.
So, what was he threat ening what political price did Schumer have in mind for the Supreme &ourt justices e was almost cer tainly warning orsuch and .avanaugh that if they did not vote as he saw fit, Senate emocrats, when they are in the majority, would fol low through on their threats to restructure the court by packing it with liberal jus tices and eliminating its con servative majority.
It wouldn’t be the first time Senate emocrats have made such threats. ast Au gust, Schumer’s second in command, Sen. 5ichard -. urbin, Ill., threatened to restructure the court if the justices took up a gun case. In a legal brief, urbin, along with emocratic Sens. Shel don :hitehouse 5.I. , Ma ie irono awaii , 5ich ard lumenthal &onn. and .irsten illibrand 1. . , warned in an amicus brief 7he Supreme &ourt is not well. And the people know it. Perhaps the &ourt can heal itself before the public demands it be restructured in order to reduce the influ ence of politics.’ As all Senate 5epublicans wrote in a letter to the court, the im plication is as plain as day ismiss this case, or we’ll pack the &ourt.
In other words, this is the second time in seven months that Senate emocratic lead ers have tried to intimidate the court to rule their way on a case, issuing threats of political repri sal. 7hese repeated threats should be taken seriously because if emo crats win the :hite ouse and the Sen ate in 1ovember, they will have the power to follow through.
7he election could be one of the most conseTuen tial in modern history when it comes to shaping the Su preme &ourt’s future. 7hose on the left are apoplectic be cause they know that if Pres ident 7rump is reelected and 5epublicans keep control of the Senate, there is a strong possibility that they will have the chance to e pand the court’s conservative ma jority. 7he left also knows that if emocrats win, their best hope is to replace liber al -ustices 5uth ader ins burg and Stephen . reyer keeping those seats in the court’s liberal bloc.
From the left’s perspec tive, that isn’t good enough, because it wouldn’t change the court’s ideological make up. emocrats know that they won’t be able to ad vance the battle for an activ ist liberal court unless they e pand the court’s si e.
Former 9ice President -oe iden has said he opposes e panding the court. e also opposed ta payer funding of abortion until last -une, when he reali ed he could not win the emocratic nomination without changing his posi tion. 7he judicial left will almost certainly demand that he similarly reverse his posi tion on court packing. As for Sen. ernie Sanders, I 9t., he has declared his intention, if elected, to push for rotat ing justices off the Supreme &ourt and replacing them with lower court judges. A federal judge has a lifetime appointment, Sanders told MS1 & last month, but the &onstitution doesn’t say that lifetime appointment has got to be on the Supreme &ourt it’s got to be on a federal court.
7his much is certain. If emocrats win in 1ovem ber, their base will not be satisfied with simply replac ing aging liberal justices with younger ones. 7hey have watched with horror as 7rump has transformed the federal judiciary. 7hey will not accept the status Tuo and what they consider an ille gitimate conservative ma jority on the Supreme &ourt. In other words, regardless of who the emocrats nomi nate, the future of Supreme &ourt is on the ballot in 1o vember.