Every four years Supreme Court watchers try to guess how many Justices the next President will be able to appoint — and what those new appointees would mean for the law. For some reason, during this campaign season the media and the public do not seem to be thinking much about this question — far less, say, than about shirtless photos of a vice-presidential candidate — but they should be. It’s not just a legal parlor game: court appointments over the next four years could rewrite the rules for everything from gun control to abortion rights.
"Now, more than ever, the illusions of division threaten our very existence. We all know the truth: more connects us than separates us. But in times of crisis the wise build bridges, while the foolish build barriers. We must find a way to look after one another as if we were one single tribe.” -King T'Challa, Black Panther
The truth is incontrovertible. Malice may attack it. ignorance may deride it, but in the end, there it is. ~Winston Churchill
4 Justices could die or retire in the next four years. For me, this is the biggest reason to vote for the GOP, since I don't expect to see a lot of other changes if Obama wins, he will still have a Republican congress and a constipated Senate.
Thomas Sowell: There are no solutions, just trade-offs.
Pretty sad state of affairs when party and personal beliefs are allowed to define the law, isn't it SC? Would be so much simpler if one side or the other wasn't looking to "interpret" their way into substituting what they think the law should be for what the law actually is. I'm reminded of one of my favorite excerpts from the writings of Jefferson taken from a letter he wrote to William Johnson in 1823:
On every question of construction let us carry ourselves back to the time when the Constitution was adopted, recollect the spirit manifested in the debates, and instead of trying what meaning may be squeezed out of the text, or invented against it, conform to the probable one in which it was passed.
Were our justices more interested in following this simple precept than they were in trying to make the law be what they think it should be whenever the opportunity presented itself, we would likely be in a much better situation than the one in which we find ourselves.
The framers provided a means by which the Constitution may be altered. That 5 people dressed in black robes can alter it outside of that specified process is one of the great failures that the framers are responsible for.
My thoughts on how that might be corrected would be to grant the 50 Chief Justices of the State Supreme Courts the ability to review the decisions of the federal Supreme Court so that there is one additional layer of protection for the liberty of the citizens of the States that resides entirely outside of the federal power system. Perhaps a call from a majority of the State Chief Justices for review and a 2/3 majority to overturn might be a reasonable parameter to operate under. All I know is that I feel there is a need for an additional layer to the current appeal process. Too often, IMNTBHO, the federal Supreme Court has been a tool by which power not delegated to the federal government has been allowed to be usurped from the States and the citizens of those States. I think, here again, that Jefferson was on the right track when he said that the best way to have a good and safe government was not to trust it all to one, but to divide it up among the many.
I don't know whether or not 2/3 of the State Supreme Courts Chief Justices would agree or disagree with many of the decisions in cases like Citizens United, McDonald, Roe, or the ACA, but I do think that vesting the absolute final say over federal matters in a federal court has led to an unintended, unwarranted and unconstitutional expansion of federal power from the day the Constitution was ratified and adopted.
Democracy4Sale wrote: Anything that gets rid of Scalia, Thomas, and Alito, and replaces them with people who aren't GOP robots will be welcome.
Obama has not a prayer of any of them retiring in the unlikely event that he is elected to serve another term than Romney would have of Ginsburg or Breyer retiring after he is elected. Ideological purists will wait for a president whose ideology is more in line with theirs than risk having an ideological enemy choose their successor. That's why Souter and Stevens got out when they did. The realized that it was unlikely that such an extreme left wing president would come around again anytime soon and wanted to make sure their successors were chosen by someone whose ideological purity was close to their own.
I gave up the GOP at the end of Ronny Raygun's first term, and my contempt for the party, and those that drag it even further to the right knows no bounds...
And that, friends, is the classic indication of a bigot:
A person who is obstinately or intolerantly devoted to her own opinions and prejudices; especially : one who regards or treats the members of a group with hatred and intolerance.
