President Joe Biden, who just established a commission to study the impact of expanding the Supreme Court, once said that packing the court was a “bonehead” idea.
The president’s potential support for packing the court would be a strong deviation from his former thoughts on the matter, video footage shows. He spoke out against court packing in 1983 when he was a United States senator, criticizing former President Ronald Reagan’s attempt to replace members of the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights, according to Fox News.
Biden compared Reagan’s efforts to former President Franklin Delano Roosevelt’s attempt to add six justices to the Supreme Court in 1937, the publication reported.
“President Roosevelt clearly had the right to send to the United States Senate and the United States Congress a proposal to pack the court. It was totally within his right to do that,” Biden said at the time. “He violated no law. He was legalistically, absolutely correct.”
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“But it was a bonehead idea,” the former Delaware senator said. “It was a terrible, terrible mistake to make. And it put in question, if for an entire decade, the independence of the most significant body … in this country, the Supreme Court of the United States of America.”
Biden refused to address whether he would pack the court during the 2020 presidential election, insisting that he would not provide such an answer until at least 180 days into his presidency and after he had received a recommendation from a bipartisan commission on changing the Supreme Court.
“If elected, what I will do is I’ll put together a national commission — a bipartisan commission … and I will ask them to, over 180 days, come back to me with recommendations as to how to reform the court system … it’s not about court packing,” he said in October.
He added: “There’s a number of alternatives that go well beyond court packing.”
The Biden administration announced the establishment of a commission to study the impact of expanding the Supreme Court on April 9.
The White House did not immediately respond to a request for comment from the Daily Caller News Foundation.
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