A newly-elected member of the Arizona House of Representatives Tuesday announced a resolution calling for a Constitutional amendment against court-packing.
“Democrats’ stated intentions to abuse our nation’s constitutional separation of powers by packing the Supreme Court are not merely an assault on the rule of law, they are a blatant attempt to politicize the world’s most respected legal body,” State Representative-elect Jake Hoffman (R-AZ-12) said in a press release. “Protecting the independence and integrity of the United States Supreme Court is an ethical and moral imperative that rises to a level of public policy importance rivaled by few other issues.”
President-elect Joe Biden, when asked whether his administration plans to lead the charge on packing the Supreme Court, said he will convene a commission “how to reform the court system,” which he says is “getting out of whack.”
Court-packing refers to adding Supreme Court Justices to the bench, and has been raised in response to the October confirmation of Justice Amy Coney Barrett to the Court, which some believe gave conservatives a 6-3 majority that could block left-wing policy initiatives.
“The overwhelming majority of Arizonans, and Americans, oppose packing the court, which is why Arizona is leading the way as the first state in the nation to call for a constitutional amendment to set the number of Supreme Court justices at nine,” Hoffman said. “The people of Arizona have long valued our nation’s founding principles of fair and equal justice under the law, and we will not allow radical Marxists like Nancy Pelosi and Kamala Harris to pervert the composition of our nation’s highest court.”
The resolution was co-sponsored by 40 of Hoffman’s Republican colleagues, and the press release notes that several other Republicans in the Arizona legislature, including Senate Majority Whip Sonny Borrelli, wished to join in co-sponsoring the resolution, but could not “due to geographical distance, the holidays, and House rules requiring wet signatures for cosponsorships.”
The Supreme Court is the highest of the federal courts, and is often called the “third branch” of the federal government.
Upon its founding, the Court had six members, and membership grew to nine throughout the 19th Century, along with the expansion of the United States as a whole.
Now, the potential for adding Justices to the Supreme Court is widely viewed, even by some on the left, merely as a political power grab.
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Pete D’Abrosca is a contributor at The Tennessee Star and The Star News Network. Follow Pete on Twitter. Email tips to [email protected].
Background Photo “Arizona Capitol” by Gage Skidmore. CC BY-SA 2.0.
