‘They want to pack the Court, and aren’t even willing to tell the American people who they are going to pack the courts with…’
(Ben Sellers, Liberty Headlines) Already, radical leftists have put forth the idea of packing the Supreme Court with additional justices to tilt the balance next time they have an opportunity.
Now, at least one coalition has begun compiling its wish-list of activist prospects, taking a page from President Donald Trump’s own playbook.
“It is essential to be ready on Day 1 of a new administration with names to fill every vacancy,” Nan Aron, president of Alliance for Justice, told The New York Times. “This is to start identifying people so the new president won’t waste a minute in addressing this need.”
AFJ announced last week that it was spearheading the new Building the Bench initiative, complete with its own Twitter hashtag.
We’ve launched #buildingthebench to make sure the next president won’t lose a minute when it comes to fixing the damage the Trump administration has done to our courts. #courtsmatter https://t.co/EahqKmFZSr
— Alliance for Justice (@AFJustice) June 12, 2019
The Times said nearly 100 federal judges were part of the judicial resistance movement, waiting for Trump—or any conservative—to leave office so that they may retire and be replaced by a like-minded (or even more radical) alternative.
Unlike Trump, though, AFJ is remaining tight-lipped about who is on its list—and with good reason, considering the smear-campaign against Justice Brett Kavanaugh began in 2012, when he already had been identified as a possible nominee if Obama had lost re-election.
AFJ spokeswoman Laura Kinney said that her group would make its list available only after a Democrat won, and then would leave it to that person to determine how to use it, according to RealClear Politics.
“Names will be shared with an incoming administration, not the nominee,” she told RCP. “And it would not be our prerogative to disclose any names.”
AFJ’s website gives a good indication, however, of the type of judges it would seek to push through.
“It would be nice to see more people who have experience outside the three big pots,” Peter Shane, a constitutional law professor at Ohio State University and a member of the Building the Bench advisory committee, told The Times, referring to the tendency to appoint sitting judges, prosecutors or senior law partners to many federal benches.
The website describes Building the Bench as “collaborative effort with many organizations that represent workers’ rights, women’s rights, civil rights, LGBTQ rights, and more.”
Specifically, the effort is targeting prospective judges who have been involved in things like social-justice advocacy, hoping to further entrench the role that judicial activism has played in supplanting and undermining the legislative power of elected representatives.
“We’ll be looking for individuals who have dedicated their legal careers to public interest, civil rights, and criminal justice causes, or who have done significant pro bono work in those areas,” said the AFJ website.
Among the groups it is partnering with in the effort are Planned Parenthood, the Mexican American Legal Defense and Educational Fund, People For the American Way and the NAACP Legal Defense Fund, Aron told Bloomberg.
Many of the current Democratic primary candidates declined to say whether they would commit to using a list compiled by the Building the Bench coalition if they were elected, according to RealClear Politics.
But critics on the Right were quick to weigh in on the lack of transparency.
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These left wing dark money groups and their Dem allies are trying to expand the number of justices on #SCOTUS. They want to pack the Court, and aren’t even willing to tell the American people who they are going to pack the courts with. What are they hiding? #SecretList— Carrie Severino (@JCNSeverino) June 10, 2019
While AFJ and its media partners claim the Trump presidency has successfully hijacked the judiciary, “furiously installing conservatives” as The Times said, to fill the spots that Republicans had succeeded in blocking during the Obama years, judicial overreach from leftist radicals has, in fact, been one of the most alarming developments in recent political history.
Using injunctions, federal judges have taken the unprecedented step of attempting to delay or block executive action on an array of issues, from immigration to transgenders in the military.
Ironically, many of the actions being blocked by liberal judges were first implemented by executive order from the Obama administration with no underlying legislative foundation.
Judges also have increasingly played a role in the Left’s efforts to establish a permanent electoral majority through means such as gerrymandering districts under its “Sue til Blue” campaigns.
The Supreme Court this week declined to rule on one such case in Virginia, determining that the state legislature lacked legal standing to challenge the court decision forcing it to redraw its districts.
Two other cases in Maryland and North Carolina are currently pending before the high court.