This week, U.S. Rep. Dan Webster, R-Fla., threw his support behind U.S. Rep. Mike Gallagher’s, R-Wisc., proposal for an amendment to the U.S. Constitution that would prevent court-packing by capping the size of the Supreme Court at nine justices.
Gallagher brought back the proposal with Webster as the only co-sponsor. Webster’s office noted that he and Gallagher first worked on the matter in 2021 “after President Biden announced he would create a commission that would explore court-packing and other reforms to the Supreme Court and House and Senate Democrats pushed legislation that would add four more justices to the court.”
The two congressmen weighed in this week on why they wanted the proposed amendment.
“Calls from the radical left to pack the Supreme Court is another senseless power grab to radically change our institutions in order to fit their political agenda,” said Webster. “Since 1869, the U.S. Supreme Court has consisted of nine members. Upsetting the balance of power between the three branches of government could destabilize the foundational principles of our Constitution’s system of checks and balances. I am confident that so long as we maintain this system of checks and balances, we will continue to enjoy the security and freedom of our Constitutional Government.”
“Radical progressives want to delegitimize the Supreme Court by packing it with liberal justices. This is a recipe for chaos, an idea so crazy that President Biden’s own Supreme Court commission dismissed it. The court has had no more than nine justices for over 150 years, and it’s time we pass a constitutional amendment to make this precedent permanent before it’s too late. We can’t undermine the public’s confidence in the court because ‘the squad’ didn’t get its way,” said Gallagher.
The two congressmen noted that the late U.S. Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg said she thought the Supreme Court should have nine members and opposed the court-packing plan that President Franklin Delano Roosevelt championed in 1937.
The resolution was sent to the U.S. House Judiciary Committee.
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