Democratic Presidential Nominee Joe Biden wants to pack the Supreme Court. He has actively avoided revealing his position on the issue on the campaign trail, a sign that he does indeed support adding justices to the bench, but is now openly signalling that stance to voters and his hopeful Democratic colleagues.
In a clip from an upcoming interview segment with CBS’s Norah O’Donnell, Biden said he wants to establish a commission to evaluate “how to reform the court system” because it is “getting out of whack.”
“What I will do is I’ll put together a national commission, bipartisan commission of scholars constitutional scholars — Democrats, Republicans, liberal, conservative — 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,” Biden said.
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.
More Sunday on @CBS. pic.twitter.com/iFvatE6ZP6
— CBS Mornings (@CBSMornings) October 22, 2020
While Biden insists that “it’s not about court-packing,” and that there are “a number of other things” scholars have debated, he fails to elaborate what other types of changes he would make.
“There’s a number of alternatives that go well beyond packing,” Biden insisted, without offering any indication as to what they might be.
“It is a live ball,” Biden said. “We’re gonna have to do that,” he added, claiming “a lot of conservative constitutional scholars” would agree with him.
The sneak peek clip ends with Biden claiming he doesn’t want the Supreme Court to be political and yet, stating that the court as is would not be satisfactory for him if elected.
“The last thing we need to do is turn the Supreme Court into just a political football: whoever has the most votes gets whatever they want,” Biden said. “Presidents come and go. Supreme Court justices stay for generations.”
Biden previously refused to answer questions about court packing, going as far as saying that voters “don’t deserve” to know his position on adding justices to the highest court in the land, and also claiming that voters will have to wait until the election is over to find out his position.
Biden has also attempted to spin the issue back on President Donald Trump and Republicans, falsely claiming that Judge Amy Coney Barrett’s nomination and pending confirmation are examples of court packing.
“The focus is why is he doing what he is doing now. Why now with less than 24 days to go in the election? And the hearings are gonna take place and they’re only gonna be about ten days or whatever it is before the vote takes place. That’s the court-packing the public should be focused on,” Biden said.
The media and Democrats ran with this narrative, twisting the definition of court-packing and ignoring the president’s constitutional duty to nominate a justice to fill the vacant seat on the court, left by the late Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg who historically opposed adding justices.
