During the week’s broadcast of Fox News Channel’s “Sunday Morning Futures,” Rep. Laurel Lee (R-FL) attacked her Democrat colleagues for their overtures about expanding the number of justices on the U.S. Supreme Court.
“Congresswoman, first, your reaction to the Democrats’ plans to expand the court if they return to power after November?” host Cheryl Cason asked.
Lee replied, “Well, the Democrats’ words there are a clear effort to attack the legitimacy of the court and to change it in an effort to achieve their preferred policy outcomes. That runs against everything in this country related to the separation of powers and protecting the independence of the court. It’s also important to note that it’s false. They will cherry-pick opinions of the court that they find unfavorable to their liberal viewpoint and highlight those, without looking at the broader body of the court’s work. In reality, the role of the judge — I can tell you, as a former judge in Florida, the role of the judge is not to make the law. It’s to apply it evenly and fairly. And this court has made rulings that sometimes favor the administration, sometimes don’t. And we need for them to be able to continue to do that and not to become just another partisan body that can be changed or undermined based on who’s in power in Congress.”
Casone said, “What do you make of their idea of term limits?”
Lee responded, “So, term limits is a really a separate issue, but it also creates another problem. So, if justices on the Supreme Court are governed by term limits, then we have to think about how those opinions, how they’re — how they might be shaped by thinking about when their term is over or what comes next. Certainly, that’s a subject that I think we could have a debate about. It’s not nearly as harmful as the thought of trying to expand the number of justices to really change the outcomes of the court’s rulings. So there are other things that I think we could have a legitimate policy debate about in Congress.”
“But, overall, this really represents the Democrats’ efforts to undermine the court and undermine the independence of the judiciary,” she added. “And the reality is, no matter who’s in control in Congress, the law doesn’t change, the Constitution doesn’t change, and neither should the court in this way. Even Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg said nine is a good number.”
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