Democratic presidential candidate Joe Biden said he would form a commission to “study” the Supreme Court and propose reforms to the judicial system when asked if he supported liberals’ court-packing efforts.
WATCH: In an interview with Joe Biden for @60Minutes, @CBSEveningNews‘ @NorahODonnell pressed Biden on his position on so-called “court packing.” It’s a controversial proposal that would add justices to the Supreme Court, from its current nine.
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In an interview with 60 Minutes, Biden was asked, once again, if he supported adding seats to the Supreme Court.
Despite many indications that Chief Justice John Roberts, a George W. Bush appointee, has crossed over into the court’s liberal wing, many on the Left continue to claim that the inevitable confirmation of Judge Amy Coney Barrett will give it a lopsided conservative tilt.
Progressives are now clamoring for the addition of at least two more justices to compensate for what they have long claimed are ‘stolen’ seats on the bench filled by President Donald Trump.
They have insisted that Trump’s predecessor, Barack Obama, was entitled to fill the seat vacated by the death of conservative Justice Antonin Scalia. But following the recent death of liberal Ruth Bader Ginsberg, they quickly pivoted to the opposite position.
Biden has refused to give a straightforward answer, initially claiming that voters didn’t “deserve” to know his position and that articulating it could potentially turn it into a focal point of the November election.
But facing backlash and public pressure over his waffling, he instead proposed to form “bipartisan” panel.
“If elected, what I will do is I’ll put together a national commission of, a bipartisan commission of scholars—constitutional scholars, Democrats, Republicans, liberal, conservative,” he claimed.
“And I will … ask them to over 180 days come back to me with recommendations as to how to reform the court system because it’s getting out of whack … the way in which it’s being handled,” he added.
Several leftist media institutions, including the Associated Press, have been ridiculed for their brazen efforts to reframe the discussion more in line with Democrat talking points.
They now claim that court-packing is not a partisan maneuver to skew the court toward an ideological agenda, but rather one to restore balance to it.
Facing a slight GOP Senate majority and assuming that Hillary Clinton would be his successor, Obama left dozens of federal judicial seats unfilled.
Trump has moved quickly to fill them, bringing a more constitutional bent to the judiciary after decades of judicial activism. Federal judges receive lifetime appointments and can only be removed through impeachment.
“It’s not about court packing,” Biden claimed. “There’s a number of other things that our constitutional scholars have debated, and I’ve looked to see what recommendations that commission might make.”
Last week, he admitted that his decision on the matter would depend on how Republicans deal with Trump’s nomination of Barrett.
“It depends on how much they rush this,” he said.
Some conservative senators, meanwhile, are pushing for Congress to come up with its own solution: a new constitutional amendment that would permanently set the number of seats on the Supreme Court at nine.
The number has remained unchanged in more than 150 years. Democrat President Franklin D. Roosevelt considered adding seats in 1937 but buckled under the backlash.
Headline USA’s Ben Sellers contributed to this report.
