Biden calls Supreme Court ‘more of an advocacy group’

The president says the Court is no longer ‘evenhanded’

President Joe Biden called the US Supreme Court “more of an advocacy group these days,” casting doubt on the court’s legitimacy in the aftermath of its decision to overturn Roe v Wade.

Mr Biden made the remark during a virtual fundraiser on Tuesday for Rep Lisa Blunt Rochester, who represents Mr Biden’s home state of Delaware in the US House. The president’s comments about the Court were first reported by NBC News.

“I view this off-year election as one of the most important elections that I’ve been engaged in because a lot can change because the institutions have changed,” Mr Biden said. “The Supreme Court is more of an advocacy group these days than it is... evenhanded about it.”

Mr Biden’s comments come as the Court has taken a hard right in turn in recent years. The Court currently features six justices appointed by Republican presidents and just three appointed by Democratic presidents, an incongruous distribution given that Democratic candidates have won the popular vote in seven of the last eight presidential elections.

To establish such a robust conservative supermajority, Republican leaders changed Senate rules and made a series of seemingly contradictory moves to push their preferred nominees through.

Republican Senate leader Mitch McConnell of Kentucky refused to give President Barack Obama’s nominee Merrick Garland a confirmation hearing following Justice Antonin Scalia’s death in the months leading up to the 2016 election, arguing that voters should have the option to choose through their presidential votes the ideology of Mr Scalia’s replacement.

Donald Trump won that election, and appointed three justices during his single term as president. His final appointee, Justice Amy Coney Barrett, was confirmed by a Mr McConnell-led Senate just eight days before the presidential election in which voters elected Mr Biden.

Trump-appointed justices like Ms Barrett and Justice Brett Kavanaugh indicated in their Senate confirmation hearings that they would not overturn Roe v Wade, but nevertheless voted to do so earlier this year.

That decision was decidedly unpopular with the American public. This summer, just 38 percent of Americans approved of the Court’s performance — a low for an institution that has historically taken pains to distance itself from partisan politics.

The low approval rating and the public’s shifting understanding of the function of the Court have led a number of people to speculate that the Court now has a legitimacy crisis. Mr Biden’s comments, which reflect what a number of Americans now believe, are unlikely to help.

The Court is set to rule on a number of other hotly contested issues, including voting rights, in its upcoming term.