The next president’s legacy is going to extend far beyond one or two terms because of the opportunity to politically shift the scales of justice.
“One of the reasons you ought to vote for Hillary is the next president’s going to get between one and three appointments to the United States Supreme Court, and we can change a lot of that,” former President Bill Clinton told a crowd last week.And that’s a huge deal that’s easily forgotten in the day to day craziness of electoral politics. No matter what issues you care about, the nation’s highest court has the final say on constitutionality.
Justices Ruth Bader Ginsburg, now 82, Antonin Scalia and Anthony Kennedy, now both 79, and Stephen Breyer, 77, could all feasibly retire before the end of the next president’s first term.
That means what has been a largely balanced (if at times political) 5-4 court could change dramatically.
Georgetown University constitutional law professor David Cole outlined it thusly in the Boston Herald last year: “Every election, people say, ‘This is about the future of the Supreme Court and the Constitution.’ This time it’s true.
“If a Republican gets to replace … the two oldest Democrats, that changes the court to a solidly, solidly 5-4 conservative court. If a Democrat gets elected and gets to replace … the two oldest on the Republican side, that also dramatically changes the court and now you have a solid 5-4 Democratic majority.”
http://personalliberty.com/bill-clinton-just-reminded-voters-of-how-important-it-is-to-avoid-voting-for-his-wife/
