Buttigieg's SCOTUS Plan Would Add Justices Openly Affiliated With Democratic Party
The separation of powers is perhaps the greatest component of American greatness. Our founders knew that power would grow corrupt if it were consolidated and purposely structured the federal government into three branches: Executive, legislative and judicial.
Two of those three — executive and legislative — contain much partisanship. This is largely unavoidable: It’s difficult if not impossible for presidential and congressional elections to be held without different candidates choosing sides, which usually fall into parties.
But the third branch is different. The men and women who make up the Supreme Court are not elected but appointed and they’re expected to evaluate laws based on the Constitution, not partisan politics.
Unfortunately, that could change if Pete Buttigieg gets his way.
The Democrat candidate for president is a longshot for the White House, to be sure.
As the 37-year-old mayor of South Bend, Indiana, there are many questions about his suitability for the Oval Office. But his fresh face and status as an openly gay man have created buzz, as liberals trip over themselves to defeat Donald Trump in 2020.
Buttigieg’s views on the Supreme Court, not his personal relationships, are raising eyebrows this week. According to NBC News, the candidate is pushing a plan to revamp the high court and make it blatantly partisan.
Since 1869 — roughly the Civil War era — there have been nine justices on the Supreme Court. Liberals, however, are alarmed at the prospect of the court leaning conservative and have begun floating proposals to “pack” the court by adding seats.
Buttigieg wants to expand it from nine seats to 15 if he is elected president.
“Five would be affiliated with the Republican Party and five with the Democratic Party,” NBC reported. “Those 10 would then join together to choose five additional justices from U.S. appeals courts, or possibly the district-level trial courts.”
The 10 “partisan” judges, including the five who would be blatantly allied with Democrats, would serve life terms just as they do now. But the additional five justices would rotate rapidly.
“They final five would serve one-year, nonrenewable terms,” NBC said. “They’d be chosen two years in advance, to prevent nominations based on anticipated court cases, and if the 10 partisan justices couldn’t agree on the final five, the Supreme Court would be deemed to lack a quorum and couldn’t hear cases that term.”
If you think this plan is getting convoluted, you’re not alone. And as NBC News pointed out, it would be a major change to openly bring political partisanship to the court.
“[T]he 15-justice idea runs into several potential problems, including the fear that having permanent justice formally affiliated with a political party actually reinforces the notion that justices, who are supposed to be apolitical, are either Democratic or Republican [there’s also the thorny question of exactly how to identify who’s a ‘Democratic’ or ‘Republican’ judge],” NBC News said.
Indeed, that partisan approach would go against many of the fundamental principles of the court.
“Members of the Supreme Court are appointed by the President subject to the approval of the Senate. To ensure an independent Judiciary and to protect judges from partisan pressures, the Constitution provides that judges serve during ‘good Behaviour,’ which has generally meant life terms,” the official Supreme Court website itself explains. [Emphasis added.]
Buttigieg’s plan would seemingly take that non-partisan ideal and flip it on its head, almost certainly making the court more political than ever before.
The candidate oddly claimed that his plan was nonpartisan. “The reform of not just expanding the number of members but doing it in a way where some of them are selected on a consensus, nonpartisan basis, it’s a very promising way to do it,” Buttigieg said during an NBC interview. However, his idea seems to purposely bring partisan politics into the court.
There’s also the question of why future presidents wouldn’t just meddle further. Once the 150-year tradition of nine judges is broken, what prevents a liberal president from adding more judges to favor Democrats, or a Republican leader to do the same? It would become a mess.
This proposal shows that Buttigieg either doesn’t understand the basic principles of our government or wants to fundamentally change them. Both options should disqualify him, and even the left should be wary of a candidate who is cavalier about modifying the foundation of America.
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