Rep. Jerry Nadler: ‘We’re Not Packing the Supreme Court, We’re Unpacking It’

Rep. Jerry Nadler (D-NY) said, “We’re not packing the Supreme Court. We’re unpacking it,” during Democrats’ legislative announcement Thursday.

“Some people will say we’re packing the Court. We’re unpacking it,” Nadler said. “Senator McConnell and Republicans packed the Court over the last couple of years… this is a reaction to that.”

“It is a necessary step in the evolution of the court,” he reiterated, “and I’m glad and proud to co-sponsor the legislation.”

“Thirteen Justices for 13 circuits is a logical progression and another reason why I’m glad to join my colleagues in introducing the Judiciary Act of 2021 to establish the Supreme Court size as 13,” Nadler added.

“It’s a nice number,” he said. “It is a proper number that matches the number of circuits as it has historically, and it also will enable us to do justice and to rectify the great injustice done in packing the court.”

Nadler, who also joined Sen. Ed Markey (D-MA), Rep. Hank Johnson (D-GA), and Rep. Mondaire Jones (D-NY), lastly noted there is no timeline for the bill to be processed through the House.

In response to the radical agenda of “unpacking” the Supreme Court, Sen. Ted Cruz, who has argued cases in front of the Court, joined Fox Business Thursday to proclaim, “Today’s Democratic Party’s more radical than it’s ever been.”

Cruz continued, “They have made a political decision to hand control over to the extreme left, the radical left, and so on the Supreme Court their objective is to put four left-wing radicals on the Supreme Court to destroy the checks and balances to destroy the independence of the judiciary.”

“FDR tried to do this in the 1930s, and his own party, the Democratic Party, said no, that would be terrible for the rule of law and that would undermine the rights of Americans that have protected the Constitution,” Cruz added. “Today’s Democratic Party doesn’t care about that at all.”

Moreover, Biden said in 1983 of former President Franklin D. Roosevelt’s court-packing scheme, “It was a bonehead idea, it was a terrible, terrible mistake.” But Biden has instead commissioned a committee to study the benefits of the packing the Court.

Even a current Supreme Court Justice has spoken out in the last week. In a video published by the Republican National Committee, Supreme Court Justice Stephen Breyer said court-packing would “diminish” the “confidence in the courts and in the rule of law itself.”

“Structural alteration motivated by the perception of political influence can only feed that perception, further eroding that trust. There can be no shortcuts to it,” Breyer, who served on the Court since 1994, articulated.

While Congress has expanded the federal courts based on caseload, “some contend that expanding the Court with the intent to shape the Court’s composition and obtain more favorable case outcomes [for the president] may raise constitutional questions,” according to the Congressional Research Service.