Every year the White House issues a proclamation declaring December 15 "Bill of Rights Day," and sure enough, the Biden administration has followed that tradition .
Here's an excerpt from that proclamation:
On December 15, 1791, three-fourths of the existing State legislatures ratified the first 10 Amendments of the Constitution — the Bill of Rights. These Amendments protect some of the most indispensable rights and liberties that define us as Americans. Though we have often struggled to live up to the promises they contain, 230 years after the ratification of the Bill of Rights, respect for human rights and fundamental freedoms remains at the center of our democracy.
We should all be grateful to the nation's founding fathers for giving the people the rights we hold precious. But there are constant attacks on it. The Constitution is the law of the land, but it's only as good as the people entrusted with upholding it. There's a school of thought that the Constitution should be a living document subject to change with the whims of the day.
The most recent efforts to attack our rights include the movement to pack the Supreme Court. A commission formed to address that has recently issued its report. See Presidential Commission on the Supreme Court of the United States. The commission was divided, and the report contained expressions from both sides. And one particularly poignant passage address how court packing is a weapon for autocrats. Here's an excerpt from page 81:
For opponents, the United States’ fidelity to this norm has particular significance in light of developments in other parts of the world where manipulation of the composition of the judiciary has been a worrying sign of democratic backsliding.121 After his election in 1989, for example, Argentinian president Carlos Menem worked to draw greater power into the executive branch, and in 1990 he successfully added four new members to a formerly five-member supreme court.122 In 2004, Hugo Chavez in Venezuela reined in judicial independence by expanding the size of the constitutional court from twenty to thirty-two.123 In 2010, Turkish leader Recep Tayyip Erdogan’s populist party consolidated control over the Turkish constitutional court by expanding its membership from ten to seventeen and altering the process by which judges were selected.124 In 2010, the populist Fidesz Party won a narrow majority in the Hungarian Parliament and quickly went about consolidating power, including through the addition of several new seats to the constitutional court.125 In 2018, a package of judicial reforms in Poland forced sitting judges off the bench and dramatically expanded the size of the supreme court.126 By contrast, these critics argue, stable democracies since the mid-twentieth century have retained a strong commitment to judicial independence and have not tended to make such moves.127For these opponents of expansion, it is important that the United States remain firmly in the ranks of democracies standing behind this commitment.
So while we celebrate Bill of Rights Day, we also should hope that those who wish it away will be unsuccessful.
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