Whoever wins the election this fall may be in a position to radically change the ideological makeup of the Supreme Court, a legacy that far outlasts a four-year term. On Wednesday, the nine justices will hear oral arguments over whether and in what ways universities can use the race of applicants as a deciding factor in admissions. Just nine years ago, the Court upheld race in admissions in a 5-4 vote when swing justice Sandra Day O’Connor joined the liberal wing of the court for the decision. O’Connor has since been replaced by the much more conservative Samuel Alito, and some judicial experts think the relatively recent decision will be reversed, displaying how quickly court nominations have consequences on the law.
President Barack Obama has already appointed two new justices to the Court and, if he’s reelected, he’ll most likely get at least one more crack at it. There are currently four justices in their seventies on the aging Supreme Court, and three of them are within four years of 79, the average age at which justices have retired since 1970.
As we wrote last week, Romney would be in a better position to drastically reshape the court if he is elected, because the oldest justice right now is the liberal Ruth Bader Ginsburg, 79. Romney would choose a conservative-leaning justice to replace her, shifting the makeup of the court so that conservatives have six votes and liberals just three. Ginsburg has hinted she will step down when she’s 82, which would be during the next presidential term.
If Ginsburg retires, Obama will almost certainly replace her with another liberal justice and the court will remain split between four reliably liberal justices and four even more reliably conservative justices, with Justice Anthony Kennedy swinging between them, but more often siding with conservatives. Obama’s earlier two Supreme Court appointments kept the status quo: He replaced two retiring liberal justices with people of a similar ideological bent, leaving the balance of the court unchanged.
But two of Ginsburg’s conservative colleagues are not far behind her in age, which means it’s possible that Obama would be in a position to replace Antonin Scalia or Anthony Kennedy, both 76. (Stephen Breyer, a liberal on the court, is 74.)
If Obama is able to replace Kennedy, a moderate conservative, or the very conservative Scalia, the court’s ideological make up would change dramatically.
A left-leaning court could alter laws on same-sex marriage, gun rights, affirmative action, campaign finance, property and a whole host of other legal issues we might not even know about yet.
Yahoo News has the full article
