JONATHAN TURLEY: University of Pennsylvania professor calls for litmus test for all Democratic candidates
University of Pennsylvania professor Michael Mann is the vice provost for Climate Science, Policy, and Action and has pushed candidates to commit to major environmental reforms. Notably, he seemed to pivot in an interview with Peter Dominick on a podcast last week, calling for all Democratic candidates to face a litmus test on committing to pack the Supreme Court: promise to pack or get the sack.
It is only the latest example of how the hostile takeover of the court is now the priority for many Democrats in removing a barrier to a radical agenda.
"When it comes to Senate races, there should be a litmus test," Mann said. "It isn’t just good enough to be a Democrat. You’ve got to be a Democrat who would be willing to expand the Supreme Court … There’s no way not to be partisan. There’s no way not to be political here. If you care about the environment, you’ve got to vote for the Democrats now."
Establishment candidates are offering the mob the Supreme Court to show their bona fides as the far left turns on "institutionalists" who support our constitutional system. As I previously wrote, even law professors and deans joined this movement in calling for the rejection of our Constitution on the 250th anniversary of our revolution.
Once packed, the court could greenlight a variety of unconstitutional measures.
Years ago, Harvard professor Michael Klarman laid out a radical agenda to change the system to guarantee Republicans "will never win another election." However, he warned that the Supreme Court "could strike down everything I just described." Therefore, the court must be packed in advance to make these changes possible.
That includes an agenda for extreme measures ranging from wealth taxes, to reparations, to climate control regulations.
MORNING GLORY: END THE FILIBUSTER, PACK THE COURT, KISS THE CONSTITUTION GOODBYE
Mann raised the need to reverse doctrines limiting agency authority — a barrier to some climate control measures. In so doing, he got the underlying law fundamentally wrong: "It was in a conservative Supreme Court decision within the last few years that introduced the so-called Chevron standard. Basically, what they said was that the EPA no longer had the authority to make rules based on the science and its own determination."
In 2024, the Supreme Court actually overturned the Chevron Doctrine in Loper Bright Enterprises v. Raimondo. It also did not rule that "the EPA no longer had the authority to make rules based on the science and its own determination." Rather, it said that courts would review such decisions without the prior presumptions in favor of agency decision-making. The restored, traditional judicial review is precisely to determine whether agency decisions are based on credible interpretations of the law and science.
Mann has had his own conflicts with the courts. He was sanctioned last year after winning a defamation case against bloggers Rand Simberg and Mark Steyn for attacking his climate control research.
At the time, some of us questioned the award, which was just $1 in actual damages but $1 million in punitive damages. In 1996, the U.S. Supreme Court decided a case, BMW of North America v. Gore, striking down a punitive damages award. The case involved the company’s practice of repairing and repainting cars damaged in transit without telling the customers.
The jury in the original trial awarded $4,000 in compensatory damages for the car’s lost value due to the lack of a factory paint job and other damage and then imposed $4 million in punitive damages for the company’s dishonesty.
D.C. Superior Court Judge Alfred S. Irving Jr. reduced the award against Steyn to just $5,000 after finding the original award to be "grossly excessive."
The court later learned that Mann’s defense team had allegedly presented false accounts of his losses after the criticism. Mann’s legal team was accused of presenting a chart listing a grant that Mann allegedly lost due to the defamatory remarks as $9.7 million, when it was later found to be worth $112,000. Irving also found a disparity in the grant income figures given to the jury.
The court found the alleged misrepresentations to be "an affront to the Court’s authority" and sanctioned Mann and his legal team "for bad-faith trial misconduct." After reversing the jury verdict, the court ordered Mann to pay $1.1 million of his critics’ legal expenses.
Now, Mann is calling for all Democratic candidates to pledge to pack the Supreme Court as a condition for running — so any Democrat who believes in our institutions and resists this mob will be a persona non grata in the party as an "institutionalist" captured by "nostalgia."
Mann joins a growing list of figures demanding the hostile takeover of the court — from former Vice President Kamala Harris to former Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg. The priority is telling.
Much of what is planned by the far left will be difficult to accomplish due to constitutional limits. You can remove those limits by eliminating an independent Supreme Court and turning this essential institution into a federal version of state courts packed with partisan jurists.
At its base, is a fundamental misunderstanding of the court’s role. Sen. Elizabeth Warren, D-Mass., not only renewed her previous call to pack the court but said the court was illegitimate for rendering decisions against "widely held public opinion." However, the court was meant to be counter-majoritarian to protect minority groups and viewpoints from the majority will.
Mann’s advice is different from that of James Carville, who wants Democrats to hide this intended move from the public — which continues to oppose court packing. Carville told Democratic candidates: "If the Democrats win the presidency and both houses of Congress, I think on day one, they should expand the Supreme Court to 13. F--- it. Eat our dust. Don’t run on it. Don’t talk about it. Just do it."
Mann and others, including former Attorney General Eric Holder, are done with any pretense: "There’s no way not to be partisan. There’s no way not to be political here."
In other words, it is time to make the Supreme Court itself partisan and political. It will then be reduced to just another partisan institution in an age of rage.