The left’s attacks on an independent Supreme Court over the past four years have only ratcheted upward. With Vice President and Democrat presumptive presidential nominee Kamala Harris’ embrace of President Joe Biden’s recent push to both pack the court and strip the most senior justices of power, we are facing a real possibility that the United States will descend into the chaos and lawlessness of Venezuela.
After Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez packed the court in 2004, the Venezuelan Supreme Court ruled exclusively in favor of the government in more than 45,000 cases. Court-packing is a recipe for a dictatorship, even here in the United States.
Since the 1930s, when President Franklin Roosevelt unsuccessfully tried to add six justices to the Supreme Court to make the court rule in favor of his New Deal legislative program, court-packing has been a red line in the United States. Even the overwhelmingly Democrat-controlled United States Senate at the time rebuked FDR’s brazen effort to destroy an independent Supreme Court.
But with the election of President Donald Trump in 2016 and his appointment of three justices that changed the direction of the historically left-wing Supreme Court, Democrats have attacked the court’s decisions and sought to undermine the court’s independence.
Democrat Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer stood on the steps of the court in March 2020 while the justices were hearing oral arguments on an abortion-related case and threatened two justices by name with violence if they voted against the pro-abortion side: “I want to tell you, Gorsuch. I want to tell you, Kavanaugh, you have released the whirlwind, and you will pay the price. You won’t know what hit you if you go forward with these awful decisions.”
Schumer’s chilling and unprecedented comments and similar comments by his allies in leftist-funded groups and the media preceded a would-be assassin going to the home of Justice Brett Kavanaugh in June 2022 to kill the justice. It was clear that nothing less than the court ruling as the Democrats demanded would quell the left’s thirst to control the court’s decisions.
Biden’s dangerous court-packing proposal, though not laid out in detail, appears to be based on Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse’s bill, which would add an additional nine justices to the court, with the president appointing a justice every two years. It would also strip the most senior justices of the ability to participate in the vast majority of cases that come before the court, and by its operations limit justices to 18-year terms of active service.
Though this plan is unconstitutional, its purpose is to immediately sideline Justice Clarence Thomas, the court’s most faithful originalist, and then Justice Samuel Alito and Chief Justice John Roberts. The net result will be to destroy the Supreme Court’s independence and the rule of law — and the protection of our liberties enshrined in the Constitution for the past 248 years.
Which brings us back to the Venezuelan catastrophe. Hugo Chavez was elected president in 1999, and after the Venezuelan high court repeatedly ruled against Chavez and his administration, Chavez pushed through a law in 2004 to increase the number of justices on the Supreme Court from 20 to 32, and then he appointed 12 new justices.
Chavez’s takeover of the Supreme Court was complete. A well-regarded study found that from 2004 until 2014, the Venezuela Supreme Court ruled in favor of the government every single time, out of 45,474 cases. After he packed the court, Chavez began to confiscate thousands of businesses. As Antonio Canova, a constitutional law professor in Venezuela and the study’s lead author, noted, “[Chavez] basically took over the entire economy.”
Once Chavez crossed the red line on meddling with an independent Supreme Court, it was easy for his hand-picked successor, Nicolas Maduro, to further rig the court. After the Venezuelan people rebuked Maduro’s policies in 2015 by voting in a legislature opposed to the government’s socialist policies, Maduro rammed through the appointments of 13 justices to replace soon-to-be retiring justices. That newly constituted court began stripping the legislature of its powers and ruling that Maduro could take action without getting legislative approval.
Venezuela may be the most well-known example of the dangers of court-packing, but a Human Rights Watch 2004 op-ed on Chavez’s court-packing also pointed to Peruvian and Argentinian presidents interfering with the courts in the 1990s by packing their respective courts with additional judges, firing them, or denying the judges tenure to control the outcomes of cases. It did not end well for both countries. Seeking to control the outcome of cases, by court-packing or other means, inevitably leads to the erosion of the rule of law, destruction of the economy, and out-of-control crime.
According to the Washington Examiner, Schumer has promised that if the Democrats win the presidency and both chambers of Congress, they plan “to roll out major overhauls” to the court, which will certainly obliterate the court’s independence. Based on the judges the Biden-Harris administration has appointed to the federal judiciary, that means a court that will rubberstamp laws and executive actions that destroy disfavored businesses, silence any dissent of governmental action, confiscate firearms, let criminals and illegal aliens run free, and take away your religious liberties.
The Biden-Harris court-packing plan will destroy America as we know it. The Supreme Court’s independence must be protected. Just ask the people of Venezuela.
Mark Paoletta served as a lawyer in the George H.W. Bush White House Counsel’s office and worked on the confirmation of Justice Thomas. He served as General Counsel of the Office of Management & Budget during the Trump Adminstration. He is a senior fellow at the Center for Renewing America.
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