Sen. Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., and Rep. Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif. (video screenshot)
A top legal expert, George Washington University law professor Jonathan Turley, is calling out Democrats who claim that the GOP work to confirm a justice to replace the late Ruth Ginsburg on the Supreme Court constitutes "court-packing."
"That statement is constitutionally unintelligible," Turley, who has worked on some of the key legal precedents in recent years and regularly comments on critical disputes, said on social media just as the Senate's confirmation hearings for Amy Coney Barrett were ready to begin.
Democrats oppose Barrett because of her judicial philosophy, which is that decisions must be grounded in the actual words of the Constitution. Ginsburg regularly made decisions based on what she felt the law should do, such as when she helped create same-sex "marriage" in a ruling that Chief Justice John Roberts said was unrelated to the Constitution.
Barrett also is a Catholic mother of seven, and Democrats oppose anyone who does not follow their party line on abortion.
Earlier in President Trump's first term, they turned the nomination process for now-Justice Brett Kanavaugh into a literal circus over his conservative points of view.
In their fight against Barrett, they have repeatedly promised they will do a job on the nation of "court-packing" if the Barrett nomination goes through, and their party controls the Senate and White House after the election.
That would be to add a number of justices to the high court so that the liberals there once again would be in the majority.
Then they even brought out the claim that GOP senators were "court-packing" by working through the constitutional procedures to replace Ginsburg.
But that's nonsense, Turley wrote.
Sen. Chris Coons just told Chris Wallace on Fox that the Senate confirming Amy Coney Barrett "constitutes court-packing." That statement is constitutionally unintelligible . . . https://t.co/8Vfz9KfAZd
— Jonathan Turley (@JonathanTurley) October 11, 2020
He wrote, "Sen. Chris Coons just told Chris Wallace on Fox that the Senate confirming Amy Coney Barrett 'constitutes court-packing.' That statement is constitutionally unintelligible…"
He continued, in a series of statements: "…Ginsburg herself said in 2016 that the Senate had to do its 'job' and vote on such nominations because 'there's nothing in the Constitution that says the president stops being president in his last year.' … What concerns me is that Democrats are rationalizing a destructive act of retaliation if they retake the White House and Senate. Ginsburg also denounced court packing as something that would decimate the court and its legitimacy…"
...It is logically and constitutionally absurd to call the filing of a vacancy on the Court as form of "court packing." It does not increase the size of the Court and is done in complete conformity with the constitutional framework.
— Jonathan Turley (@JonathanTurley) October 11, 2020
He explained "it is logically and constitutionally absurd to call the fil[l]ing of a vacancy on the court as form of 'court packing.' It does not increase the size of the court and is done in complete conformity with the constitutional framework."
He continued, "To say that fil[l]ing a vacancy on the Supreme Court is 'court packing' is like saying that a 'Hail Mary' pass at the end of a football game is 'intentional grounding.' The Constitution expressly allows for such for a nomination and confirmation…"
The Democrats' claims about the Senate process being unconstitutional, and the GOP efforts are "court-packing," have been around for weeks already. But it was clarified in a recent interview Kate Bedingfield, a Joe Biden campaign staffer, had with Jake Tapper.
She insisted that the Republican moves were unconstitutional even though Tapper pointed out that was not the case.
"This court is being packed now by the Republicans," she claimed. She said voters have a constitutional right to have a say on judicial nominees through their election of senators and a president. She claimed the Trump administration is violating the constitutional rights of Americans by following the procedures specified in the Constitution.
She did not address the fact that the voters already expressed that very opinion in their 2016 election of President Trump and their votes over several election cycles for their senators.
See it:
Turley is nationally recognized and has written on subjects ranging from constitutional law and legal theory to tort law.
Those articles hve appeared in law journals for Cornell, Duke, Georgetown, Harvard, Northwestern, University of Chicago, and other schools.
He now holds the prestigious Shapiro Chair for Public Interest Law and is the youngest chaired professor in the school’s history.
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