On June 26, U.S. Supreme Court Justice Anthony Kennedy announced his retirement from the high court. A few days later, during prime-time TV, President Trump announced the nomination of Judge Brett Kavanaugh.
From social media to newsrooms, reactions have run the gamut from excitement to despair. Conservatives are mostly happy. Liberals fear the worst. The fact that ABC interrupted an episode of The Bachelorette to carry President Trump's announcement says a lot about how big this pick really is.
Justice Kennedy is the court's pivotal swing vote. His opinions have put him to the right of the late Justice Antonin Scalia at times and to the left of Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg at others. He is the reason so many landmark court decisions have been split along a vote of 5-4, and his departure will change the direction of the U.S. Supreme Court fundamentally. The question is, which way will the court go?
The Supreme Court stands at a crossroads. Odds are slim that Judge Kavanaugh or whoever is ultimately confirmed will be exactly like retiring Justice Kennedy. Liberals worry that Judge Kavanaugh will rule like Justices Neil Gorsuch or Clarence Thomas, tipping the bench to the right. Conservatives see an opportunity to stack the court, but there's plenty of apprehension. They remember the appointment of Justice David Souter--a George H.W. Bush appointee who seemed conservative in 1990, but turned out to be liberal.
Headline after headline has talked about what is at stake for the nation and how devastating it will be if the wrong person is placed on the U.S. Supreme Court. I wonder if President Trump could cause this much national anxiety if he tendered his resignation from the Oval Office.
An 81-year-old judge should not be able to throw a whole country into turmoil by hanging up his robe after three decades of public service. This shows just how powerful the Supreme Court has become. For years, conservatives have said the federal courts are out of control, and that we need to rein in the U.S. Supreme Court. Some people fear that this is what President Trump may be doing.
Like it or not, President Trump has picked a Supreme Court Justice, and he could pick a couple more before his term is up. Justice Ginsburg is 85, and Justice Stephen Breyer will turn 80 this August. Neither of them can serve on the court forever. If anything, the stress and anxiety that clouds U.S. Supreme Court appointments show that the court has become far too powerful.
With activist judges continuing to run roughshod over voters and state legislatures, with the country in an uproar about who will take Justice Kennedy's place, and with President Trump in a position to stack the nation's highest court in his favor, can conservatives and liberals alike finally agree that it is time to clip the wings of the U.S. Supreme Court?
Unfortunately, the court has become a trump card that people play if they can't get their way at the ballot box or in the legislature. Whoever ends up replacing Justice Kennedy needs to be someone who will curtail the court's power. Otherwise the stakes and the ante are only going to rise higher each time one of those nine seats becomes vacant--and we're likely to see The Bachelorette interrupted again when the next court appointment is announced.
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Jerry Cox is the President of Family Council, a conservative education and research organization based in Little Rock.
Editorial on 07/13/2018