President Joe Biden promised Black voters Wednesday that he would appoint progressives to the US Supreme Court if elected to a second term, suggesting he expects vacancies on the high court over the next four years.
“The next president, they’re going to be able to appoint a couple justices, and I’ll be damned — if in fact we’re able to change some of the justices when they retire and put in really progressive judges like we’ve always had, tell me that won’t change your life,” he said during a campaign rally in Philadelphia.
It was as explicit a warning as Biden could offer about the stakes of the upcoming election, and a clear reminder that some of the nine justices have entered their seventies.
Clarence Thomas is 75 and Samuel Alito is 74; both are conservative and appointed by Republican presidents. Sonia Sotomayor, a liberal who was nominated by President Barack Obama, turns 70 next month.
Actually progressive or “biden is the most progressive president in recent US history” progressive? I’ll take either over the alternative, but I’d love it if it was more than former than the latter.
Cmon, you know it’s the latter.
Still a lot better than anything Trump would come up with.
I’ll take anyone who isn’t a corporate careerist at this point. The people sitting on the supreme court shouldn’t be expecting to leverage it to make an exhorbitant amount of money.
Actually progressive or “biden is the most progressive president in recent US history” progressive?
He’s going to appoint Merrick Garland again.
“Just as soon as the court decides that the President is immune from prosecution, I expect there will be six vacancies soon after.” wink
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I read this in the voice of the alien from omicron persei 8 on Futurama
Put some respect on LUR RULER OF THE PLANET OMICRON PERSEI 8’s name
It’s actually Lrrrr and his lovely wife Ndnd
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Well, since it is legal for a President to order assassinations… why not open SCOTUS up to some new blood?
He should pull an FDR and try to get the court expanded to 12.
11 or 13. You don’t do even numbers on the SC so there aren’t voting ties.
Yeah agreed. I never quite understood FDRs thinking on putting an even number of people in the court. We have so many 5-4 decisions now an even court would be chaos.
Force a definitive decision, instead of precedent that keeps getting overturned?
Tennis woks kinda like that.
Can’t they recuse or abstain from voting though?
Yes. But that rarely happens (usually just because of health issues). There are very few decisions that have been made where all the members didn’t weigh in. When even votes have happened the lower court ruling will stand as is. Which is particularly bad when you have places like the 5th circuit trying their best to fascism.
12 with ties being decided by a season of survivor.
13 is a better number, it matches the number of Federal Appelate Courts.
If Democrats manage to take both houses of Congress and the Presidency, I would advocate for immediately passing a law to increase the size of the SC to 13, effective for the start of the SC’s 2026 term.
Then, Democrats and Republicans should go to work to enact a Constitutional Amendment for term limits on the SC. Republicans would finally have incentive to do it quickly, or else Biden would name 4 young Liberals to the SC who will be there 40+ years without term limits.
I think a better solution should tie SC seats to the number of federal district courts. That way, should the number grow in the future, SC seats will be added automatically
Yes, that is better, but would require a Constitutional Amendment to formalize, otherwise a future Congress can just change it. Which is why you start with expansion, then force the Republicans to the table to discuss the amendment under a time limit.
If I’m not mistaken, Biden could add seats if he wanted to, so could any president. I think no one wants to do it because then the other party would add more as well.
The size of the SC is set through legislation, so a law would need to pass Congress, and the President would need to sign it. So one party can’t do it unilaterally unless they control both houses of Congress and the Presidency.
I wish he would. The only thing stopping him, ironically, is his fear of appearing partisan (and angering “moderate” republicans, if they even exist anymore), despite the fact that that’s exactly what this would be attempting to remedy.
I’d love to be wrong, but he’ll never do it. He’s barely even willing to talk about the supreme court’s corruption and blatant bias. I think he’s allergic to that much institutional change.
He called Trump semi-fascist in 2022 and backed off since. Biden does not push the limits of any power he wields.
You’ll note there has been an endless amount of arguments about Biden’s limitations to his ability and power to effect change, but never that he is pushed up against those limits.
Biden was most popular when he was fighting for Green New Deal and BBB. But his inability to whip his party into voting for the platform the Democratic party ran on was disappointing and he has never recovered.
He won’t. Biden would have done it already.
It’s very likely the GOP will win control of the Senate, and if they do McConnell would sooner die than let Biden even consider nominating someone.
Still gonna vote for Biden though, because if Trump wins the Conservative justices will all retire at once and they’ll nominate 30-year-olds to fill in. I don’t want 60+ more years of a Conservative court majority!
McConnell has already said he would step down from Senate leadership, so some other guy would get the task of impeding everything Biden does.
However, things are looking better than they used to that Democrats will at least be able to hold the Senate to a 50/50 split, and possibly also pick off Ted Cruz in Texas. Democrats who are not fond of Biden don’t seem to be taking it out on their Senate candidates. There are several states where Biden is trailing, yet the incumbant Democratic Senator still has a good lead.
McConnell has already said
Let me stop you right there, because this man has already shown his word doesn’t mean anything. It shifts with the political winds.
Democrats have to win in a lot of red states this time around. I’d be over the moon if that happened, but maybe we should have a backup plan in case Democrats lose in Ohio, Montana and Texas.
Democrats already have 51 seats (counting the independants). WV is a lost cause, but if they keep the seats they currently hold (including Arizona), that’s how they get to the tie at 50.
You point out Ohio and Montana where holding that seat will be hard, but signs are pointing up.
Biden not causing many stiffies will have a negative impact on the number of those actually going to the polls though
While it’s POSSIBLE there will be vacancies in the next presidential term, the two oldest, Thomas and Alito, will still be younger in 2028 than Biden is now.
So I wouldn’t exactly hold my breath on Biden getting the picks.
Whoever serves from '28 to '32 will likely get to replace both Thomas and Alito, then the next two oldest are Roberts and Sotomayor.
According to Trump’s lawyers, Biden could use Seal Team Six to … create some vacancies.
Clearly never going to happen, but it’s too silly of an actual legal argument to ignore.
Or he expects there to be no vacancies, giving him the option to say whatever he thinks might get him votes without ever having to follow through on his promises.
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Doubt any would retire willingly. It’s a sad state of affairs that judges will go until death before allowing the other side replace them.
so now on top of not being that other he is saying he will be a better president in the next four years because he thinks people might die
he is really grasping at straws at this point
executive order abortion rights in, legalize cannabis, and raise the minimum wage a lot
that alone would guarantee him this next election no debates or speeches or anything else would be needed
Is executive order enough to raise the minimum wage?
I guess he could order all federal agencies will only work with companies that pay some new minimum.
Feels like abortion would get destroyed by the 5th circuit and the supreme court just like many of the other things they’ve tried to do
Nah, triple the size and pack it full. It’s our only hope.
Playing devil’s advocate but couldn’t that backfire spectacularly? The
born again nazisRepublicans play the long game and we could see even larger scrotus stacked withnazisRepublicans.They’ll do that as soon as it suits them anyway.
Herod’s Law
He won’t. They’ll be centrist/liberals at best
It suggests that Republican SCOTUS judges might want to retire but they aren’t under any obligation to do so in the next 4 years. Unless he’s ready to pull the trigger on court reforms or he’s got an assassin lined up this is just another empty promise.
Not sure whether to poke at the fact that there probably won’t be any vacancies or that he would actually choose a progressive considering people are resigning from his administration every week over Gaza.
“Whelp, I tried but we can’t get the votes to confirm them”
