Professors have urged President Joe Biden to ignore the rulings of “MAGA justices” and, instead, just push his agenda through.
The open letter from Harvard law Prof. Mark Tushnet and San Francisco State University political scientist Aaron Belkin, essentially asserted that former President Donald Trump altered the court into being something abnormal.
We urge President Biden to restrain MAGA justices immediately by announcing that if and when they issue rulings that are based on gravely mistaken interpretations of the Constitution that undermine our most fundamental commitments, the Administration will be guided by its own constitutional interpretations.
The letter comes in response to a series of recent rulings from the U.S. Supreme Court that strengthened religious liberty and struck down a left-wing sacred cow, such as racial preferences in colleges.
“We have worked diligently over the past five years to advocate Supreme Court expansion as a necessary strategy for restoring democracy,” the letter said. “Although we continue to support expansion, the threat that MAGA justices pose is so extreme that reforms that do not require Congressional approval are needed at this time, and advocates and experts should encourage President Biden to take immediate action to limit the damage.”
The professors said that the president should, instead, explain to the American people that the Supreme Court made “egregiously wrong” decisions and push forward an alternative to prevent what they referred to as a “grave threat.”
“In this particular historical moment, MAGA justices pose a grave threat to our most fundamental commitments because they rule consistently to undermine democracy and to curtail fundamental rights, and because many of their rulings are based on misleading and untrue claims,” they wrote.
Writing for the Hill, George Washington University law Prof. Jonathan Turley stated that Profs. Tushnet and Belkin were essentially speaking from a place of privilege by calling on “Biden to declare himself the final arbiter of what the Constitution means.”
US President Joe Biden speaks at the 29th AFL-CIO Quadrennial Constitutional Convention at the Pennsylvania Convention Center in Philadelphia on June 14, 2022 (Photo by NICHOLAS KAMM/AFP via Getty Images).
“What is most striking about these professors is how they continue to claim they are defenders of democracy, yet seek to use unilateral executive authority to defy the courts and, in cases like the tuition forgiveness and affirmative action, the majority of the public,” Turley wrote, adding, “They remain the privileged elite of academia, declaring their values as transcending both constitutional and democratic processes.”
“In other words, they are calling for Biden to declare himself the final arbiter of what the Constitution means and to exercise unilateral executive power without congressional approval. He is to become a government unto himself,” he continued.
Breitbart News senior legal contributor Ken Klukowski called it “an assault on constitutional government.”
“This is an assault on constitutional government because the Constitution creates three coequal branches of government,” he said. “One of the hallmarks of a free society is an independent court system, and these professors are saying that the courts should not be independent if they render decisions left-wing activists do not like.”
“Judicial independence is most important when disfavored decisions are on the line,” Klukowski explained. “The rule of law collapses when part of the country says they can reject court decisions if they feel strongly enough about the issue before the court because both liberals and conservatives feel strongly about all sorts of issues.”
Some activists have even gone so far as to call for court-packing to prevent further rulings from the Trump-appointed justices, even though the idea has proven wildly unpopular with the American public and even liberal justices themselves. In 2021, for instance, former liberal Justice Stephen Breyer said that court-packing would erode any and all trust in the judiciary.
“If the public sees judges as ‘politicians in robes,’ its confidence in the courts, and in the rule of law itself, can only diminish, diminishing the court’s power, including its power to act as a ‘check’ on the other branches,” Breyer said in a speech to Harvard Law:
“The court’s decision in the 2000 presidential election case, Bush v. Gore, is often referred to as an example of its favoritism of conservative causes,” he later added. “But the court did not hear or decide cases that affected the political disagreements arising out of the 2020 Trump v. Biden election. It did uphold the constitutionality of Obamacare, the health care program favored by liberals,” Breyer said in noting some of the things that the court has sided with liberals on. “It did re-affirm precedents that favored a woman’s right to an abortion. It did find unlawful certain immigration, census, and other orders, rules, or regulations, favored by a conservative president.”
A 2019 poll from Rasmussen showed that Americans largely agree with term limits for Supreme Court justices but do not favor court packing.
Speaking with NPR, former liberal the late Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg criticized past attempts to pack the Supreme Court, such as when President Franklin Roosevelt attempted to do so in the 1930s.
Associate Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg poses for the official photo at the Supreme Court in Washington, DC, on November 30, 2018 (MANDEL NGAN/AFP/Getty Images).
“Nine seems to be a good number,” Ginsburg said. “It’s been that way for a long time. I think it was a bad idea when President Franklin Roosevelt tried to pack the Court.”
Paul Roland Bois joined Breitbart News in 2021. He also directed the award-winning feature film EXEMPLUM, which can be viewed for FREE on YouTube or Tubi. A high-quality, ad-free stream can also be purchased on Google Play or Vimeo on Demand. Follow him on Twitter @prolandfilms or Instagram @prolandfilms.