Rev. Raphael Warnock, who will assume the Georgia Senate seat in the coming weeks, did not answer a significant question throughout his campaign: whether or not he would support the addition of more judges to the Supreme Court.
Questioned twice during a December 6 debate with Senator Kelly Loeffler, Warnock dismissed the issue of packaging the court as a Washington obsession.
“As I move across the state, people don’t ask me about the courts and whether we should expand them,” he told the Atlanta Press Club debate moderator. “I know it’s an interesting question for people within Beltway to discuss, but [people in Georgia] are wondering what the hell are they going to get some relief from COVID-19. “
Nine Supreme Court justices became the standard number in 1869, although no number is specified in the Constitution.
“Packing” the court with extra judges was unsuccessfully attempted by President Franklin Delano Roosevelt in 1937, who tried to force parts of his New Deal that were considered unconstitutional by the higher court.
Loeffler throughout the campaign predicted that Warnock would work with Democrats to add judges to the court.
“The radical left – including @ReverendWarnock – wants to pack the Supreme Court and stack the judiciary with activist judges who write bank laws, undermine public security and destroy our rights,” she wrote on Twitter in late November. “It’s not happening on my watch.”
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After the election victory, Warnock said he was not concerned about the issue.
“Progressives across the country are celebrating that their election could mean adding two states, removing obstruction and filling the Supreme Court with more members,” asked ABC’s “The View” co-host Meghan McCain to the reverend this week. “His colleague Joe Manchin joined the Republicans to reject these ideas. Chuck Schumer this morning tweeted ‘fasten your belt’. So you can understand how hard it is for Republicans like me to believe in the spirit of unity, and I want to know: will you do the same thing as Joe Manchin and agree not to pursue any of these things? “
“Well, I’m not focused on any of those things,” said Warnock, adding that he was more concerned with health. “Sometimes those words just become political jargon.”
“Senator, I believe the average American is concerned with filling the courts and I just want to know if you would agree to join Joe Manchin and agree that you are not in favor of that,” said McCain.
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“My job is to take into account the concerns being raised by my constituents,” said Warnock.
The idea of packing the Supreme Court gained momentum this year after Judge Ruth Bader Ginsburg’s death in September. Democrats accused Republicans of stealing his seat after they pushed Judge Amy Coney Barrett’s confirmation onto the bench so close to an election.
Meanwhile, Democrat Jon Ossoff, Warnock’s future colleague in Georgia, opposed the idea of adding chairs to the bench.
“We shouldn’t expand the Supreme Court just because a judge from whom we disagree about politics can be confirmed,” he said in a September interview to Classic City News.
Still, Warnock avoided the issue in another interview.
“I think it is presumptuous on my part to go further on this path – to talk about what should happen to the courts,” Warnock said at another meeting on the subject in November. “I am hopeful that the people of Georgia will examine my life, look at my background and give me the great honor of representing them in the United States Senate.”
Even the opposition of a small number of Democrats would end any chance of getting a measure of packaging from the court in Congress.
In addition to Ossoff, Sens. Kyrsten Sinema, D-Ariz., And Joe Manchin, DW.Va., expressed opposition to adding judges to the court.
After repeatedly dodging questions about whether he supports the packaging of the courts, then candidate Biden said in October that he would form a commission to examine “how to reform the justice system”.
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“If elected, what I will do is form a national commission, a bipartisan commission of academics, constitutional academics, Democrats, Republicans, liberals, conservatives,” he said in an interview. “I will ask them to come back to me for more than 180 days with recommendations on how to reform the justice system, because it is getting out of step.”
Adam Shaw of Fox News contributed to this report.