CA Democrat Senate Candidate Barbara Lee Calls to Pack Supreme Court

Rep. Barbara Lee (D-CA), who is a leading candidate to replace ailing Sen. Dianne Feinstein in California, called Sunday to pack the Supreme Court by adding new seats and filling them with liberal justices.

Lee’s call amplifies the effort by Democrats, including House Judiciary Committee Ranking Member Rep. Jerry Nadler (D-NY), to counter the Court’s conservative majority by creating a new, artificial liberal majority.

The East Bay Times reported:

Flanked by local leaders, U.S. Rep. Barbara Lee called for a radical overhaul of the U.S. Supreme Court at a press conference in Oakland on Sunday, calling the way the court currently operates “a crisis of democracy”.

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Lee is one of many progressive voices now advocating for Congress to expand the Supreme Court. On Sunday, she described the court’s current situation as beholden to an “unethical, unaccountable conservative majority,” and made the case that adding justices would not be without precedent. The number of justices has changed multiple times, although not since 1869.

Lee is a co-sponsor of Nadler’s 2021 legislation to expand the Court, which he announced even before President Joe Biden’s commission to study the issue had issued its findings (it said the outcome would be “uncertain”).

Democrats once rejected the idea of packing the Supreme Court, even when it was pushed by then-President Franklin Delano Roosevelt. But they took up the cause after conservative Justice Brett Kavanaugh was confirmed, tilting the Court in a conservative direction. And they claim the Court has lost legitimacy since overturning Roe v. Wade (1973) and other liberal precedents imposed earlier by an activist liberal Court.

Lee is running for Senate along with Rep. Adam Schiff (D-CA), who is using the notoriety he gained by leading the impeachment effort against President Donald Trump in 2019 and 2020 to drum up support. But Governor Gavin Newsom (D) could also choose to appoint Lee in the event that Feinstein, who has suffered health scares and is under pressure to resign, steps down. That would add another court-packing advocate to the Senate.

Joel B. Pollak is Senior Editor-at-Large at Breitbart News and the host of Breitbart News Sunday on Sirius XM Patriot on Sunday evenings from 7 p.m. to 10 p.m. ET (4 p.m. to 7 p.m. PT). He is the author of the new biography, Rhoda: ‘Comrade Kadalie, You Are Out of Order’. He is also the author of the recent e-book, Neither Free nor Fair: The 2020 U.S. Presidential Election. He is a winner of the 2018 Robert Novak Journalism Alumni Fellowship. Follow him on Twitter at @joelpollak.

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