House Democrats on Wednesday pushed to allow the Biden administration to oversee the largest expansion of federal district courts in 30 years.
Enlarging federal courts is a bipartisan idea, but many Democrats took advantage of control over both chambers of Congress and the presidency to advocate for an immediate expansion. Citing unmanageable caseloads in courts across the country, they chafed at Republican suggestions for bipartisan court expansion that would take place over the course of multiple administrations.
“If there’s a need for more judges, there’s a need for more judges now,” said Tennessee Rep. Steve Cohen. “Justice delayed is justice denied.”
Cohen, along with other Democrats during a House Judiciary Committee hearing on court expansion, complained that under Trump, the racial diversity of the judiciary had decreased. Former President Donald Trump and then-Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell pushed through a record number of federal judicial nominees, prompting top Democrats to promise revenge when they retook control.
BIDEN POISED TO SWING THE 9TH CIRCUIT BACK TO THE LEFT
New York Rep. Mondaire Jones accused Republicans of holding up efforts to make the courts more diverse and said that Democrats should maximize their opportunity while they have it.
“President Biden has committed to building a judiciary that truly represents America,” he said. “By expanding the courts, we can help him achieve that goal faster.”
Jones has also advocated expanding the Supreme Court beyond its current nine members, saying it’s the only way to dilute what he calls undue influence by former President Donald Trump, who appointed three justices in his single, four-year term.
Several Republicans at the hearing returned fire, pointing out that during Trump’s tenure, House Democrats did not hold hearings on the need to add more judges to the lower courts, presumably because the move would have given the former president to fill more seats.
Republicans throughout the Trump years pushed for expanding the lower federal courts. Indiana Sen. Todd Young introduced a bill last October calling for a court expansion that would take place over several presidential administrations.
The last time Congress significantly expanded the federal courts was in 1990, when it added 11 circuit court judges and 74 district court judges. The court system’s policy arm, the Judicial Conference, last year asked Congress for five more circuit court judges, as well as 65 more district court judges on the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals.
Previous to the 1990 expansion, the last time Congress added a significant number of seats to the court was in during former President Jimmy Carter’s administration, allowing him to set a record for judicial confirmations matched only by Trump. In a similar manner, the 1990 expansion benefited future President Bill Clinton, who entered the White House with the most seats to fill in modern presidential history.
In undertaking the next lower court expansion, Democrats should be careful not to benefit their own party disproportionately, said Brian Fitzpatrick, a law professor at Vanderbilt University. Using the U.S. 9th Circuit Court of Appeals as an example, Fitzpatrick told the committee that courts become politicized when one party has the ability to stack it with judges friendly to its causes.
“The 9th Circuit has been a political football for decades because all of those judgeships were created for President Carter, and now, the 9th Circuit has been a predictable, partisan, and imbalanced court for decades,” he said.
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Trump, during his final years in office, attempted to rework the 9th Circuit, long a liberal bastion, into a more right-leaning body. While he narrowed the gap between liberal and conservative judges, legal experts predicted that under Biden, the court would swing back to the left.
Many Democrats have in the past few months pushed for Biden to back a Supreme Court expansion, a move that the president has rejected.
