Chief Justice Roberts will be the new 'swing' vote
By Jonathan Nash, opinion contributor — 06/30/18 05:00 PM EDT Chief Justice John Roberts may be the biggest beneficiary of Justice Anthony Kennedy’s retirement. Justice Kennedy has served as the “swing vote†on the Court for much of his tenure, and certainly since the retirement of Justice Sandra Day O’Connor last decade.
However, President Donald Trump will not be looking to appoint a “swing vote.†Indeed, if Justice Neil Gorsuch is any evidence, President Trump will try to appoint another reliable conservative.
Nonetheless, on a court of nine, there will always be some Justice whose beliefs place him or her in the middle among his or her colleagues. Therefore, assuming President Trump’s nominee will not be a swing vote, a sitting Justice will assume that role. It is likely that the new swing vote will be Chief Justice Roberts.
As political scientists and legal scholars have expounded, if we arrange the Justices’ beliefs on some one-dimensional scale — most would understand this as ranging from “more conservative†to “more liberal†— some Justice will lie in the middle.
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http://thehill.com/opinion/judiciary/394940-chief-justice-roberts-will-be-the-new-swing-vote
