When it comes to presidents using the powers of the executive branch to go after their rivals, Donald Trump’s disdain for Barack Obama pales in comparison to President Abraham Lincoln’s beef with his biggest hater:
Supreme Court Chief Justice Roger Taney.
Not only did Lincoln despise Taney, but the president was physically incapable of hiding his hate for Taney’s racism, his judicial authority and the Supreme Court as a staff, record label and branch of government. It was so bad that Lincoln attacked Taney, and one “evil” three-year-old Supreme Court decision in particular, on his first day in office.
“I do not forget the position assumed by some that constitutional questions are to be decided by the Supreme Court,” Lincoln explained in his inaugural address. “[I]t is obviously possible that such decision may be erroneous.”
Lincoln eventually figured out the best way to stop Taney and “the evil” he produced. In his very first presidential address, Lincoln declared that “the country has generally outgrown our present judicial system.” Less than three months after Southern states seceded from the Union to start a white supremacist empire, Congress’ anti-slavery coalition found a way to reduce Roger Taney’s power, save America and prevent that terrible SCOTUS decision he hated from ever happening again. Lincoln and Congress used a method endorsed by the founding fathers and America’s greatest presidents:
Lincoln packed the Supreme Court.
The Supreme Court had five members until Jefferson expanded it. Andrew Johnson shrank it back to nine to appease Southern conservatives. FDR tried to expand the court to 15 to stop the conservative haters who opposed the New Deal.
To be fair, there is another way to enact progressive reforms.
Do what Black voters want.
The U.S. Department of Education was created after newly emancipated Black people won the right to vote. When Andrew Johnson pardoned Confederate traitors and gave them the right to vote, the white boys returned to Congress and dissolved the agency. The Department of Justice was created to protect Black people a month before the 1870 election, which just happened to be the largest Black turnout in history. Black voters didn’t just reject Republican Barry Goldwater in 1964; the blue wave produced the Civil Rights Act. Obamacare passed because Democrats controlled both houses of Congress in 2010.
Every week, Blacksplained asks an expert, a scholar or someone who just knows what they’re talking about to tackle one issue or answer one question from a Black perspective. But when it comes to the midterm elections, I didn’t have to ask Elie Mystal what he thinks the first thing the Democratic-controlled Congress should do
As The Nation’s justice correspondent, Mystal has championed Supreme Court expansion for years. He’s written about it in his books: the New York Times bestseller Allow Me to Retort: A Black Guy’s Guide to the Constitution and Bad Law: Ten Popular Laws That Are Ruining America.
No one needs to Blacksplain the sentence that sparked Lincoln’s decision to expand the Supreme Court:
They had for more than a century before been regarded as beings of an inferior order, and altogether unfit to associate with the white race, either in social or political relations; and so far inferior, that they had no rights which the white man was bound to respect.
Today, Elie Mystal Blacksplains the easiest way Democrats can save democracy.
