[Congressional Record Volume 167, Number 185 (Thursday, October 21, 2021)]
[Senate]
[Page S7137]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]



                           U.S. Supreme Court

  Madam President, now on one final matter, earlier this week during a 
trip to South America, Secretary of State Blinken said that 
``undermining the independence of the courts'' and ``packing courts'' 
were among ``the ways that democracies can come undone.'' This is the 
Secretary of State during a trip to South America. His warning was 
apparently directed to neighbors in our hemisphere, but ironically--
ironically--his own fellow Democrats here in Washington, DC, apparently 
need the same lecture.
  Last week, President Biden's much-ballyhooed Commission tasked with 
studying potential changes to the makeup of the U.S. Supreme Court 
issued its first findings. In some corners of the radical left, there 
was predictable disappointment that it had not more explicitly fed the 
flames.
  But let's be clear: The mere creation of this Commission was itself a 
clumsy act of political thuggery against judicial independence, and 
what it did seem to support--slapping term limits on Supreme Court 
Justices--is no less of a radical affront to the principles on which 
the Court was established.
  So, Madam President, curtailing the tenure of our Nation's senior-
most judges is such an obvious threat to judicial independence, it has 
literally been warned about since our Nation's founding. Here is what 
Alexander Hamilton had to say about it--and he didn't mince any words--
in Federalist 78. He warned that the judiciary is ``in continual 
jeopardy of being overpowered, awed or influenced by its coordinate 
branches; and that as nothing can contribute so much to its firmness 
and independence, as permanency in office''--permanency in office--
``this quality may therefore be justly regarded as an indispensable 
ingredient in its constitution.''
  This is Alexander Hamilton, Madam President--``an indispensable 
ingredient''--Alexander Hamilton on life tenure for judges. Our 
Founders insisted on it because they knew that the branches of 
government with the powers to write and execute laws would be tempted 
to undermine the branch that could exercise nothing but its judgment.
  To an alarming degree in recent years, we have seen Democrats in both 
the executive and the legislative succumb to exactly the temptation 
that Alexander Hamilton warned us about, from the brazen amicus brief 
from a group of our Senate colleagues warning the Court to ``heal 
itself'' lest it be ``restructured,'' to the bizarre verbal threats 
issued by the Democratic leader on the steps of the Court, naming 
Justices who would ``pay the price'' for failing to rule the way he 
wanted, to the pseudoacademic Commission the President created to 
consider reanimating the ugly cadaver of court packing that his party 
last tried 80 years ago.
  So, Madam President, these are nonsense responses to a nonexistent 
problem. The real problem is the shameful depths to which Democrats are 
apparently willing to stoop in pursuit of brute power. As I have said 
before, sensible people of all political stripes have an obligation to 
condemn this behavior. But the most embarrassing condemnation of these 
tired tactics? Our Founders saw it coming centuries in advance.