What happens to America if Justice Kennedy retires

[mahatmakanejeeves]

Hat tip, SCOTUSblog: Thursday round-up

Ian Millhiser
Justice Editor, ThinkProgress. Author of Injustices: SCOTUS’ History of Comforting the Comfortable and Afflicting the Afflicted [e-mail]
Jul 5

What happens to America if Justice Kennedy retires
Say goodbye to Roe, racial justice, voting rights, and any new progress on LGBT rights.

....
Four years from now, {Donald} Trump may be remembered as both a political accident and the man who inspired a broad coalition of voters to cast his unique brand of racist incompetence out of office. He owes his job to a constitutional relic that allows the loser of a presidential election to nonetheless take office, and Trump has thus far struggled to advance a legislative agenda through Congress. ... And yet, if Kennedy does retire, Trump will be an extraordinarily consequential president.

Kennedy is a conservative. But on a number of issues — such as abortion, race, LGBT rights, criminal justice, and gerrymandering — he was a relative moderate compared to his fellow Republicans on the Supreme Court. If Trump nominates someone to replace Kennedy who’s more similar to Neil Gorsuch, the hardline conservative Trump picked for the seat that Senate Republicans held open until Trump could fill it, the law will move drastically to the right on many crucial issues.
....

And yet, a president who lost by nearly 3 million votes could fill a second seat on the Supreme Court with a hardliner similar to Neil Gorsuch. If Kennedy retires, moreover, Trump’s second nominee is likely to be confirmed by a bloc of senators who, due to Senate malapportionment, represent less than half of the nation.

If that happens, we will have the most conservative Supreme Court since the early days of the Roosevelt administration. The Court will run roughshod over rights that millions of Americans take for granted. It will grow even more political. Women, people of color, gender and sexual minorities will wait each June to discover how the Court will push them deeper into the margins of society.

[exboyfil]

4. He has to decide if he wants a Gorsuch

or a Ginsburg to take his seat. Also he does have the rest of his life to consider.

[exboyfil]

2. What happens if Ginsberg can't make it four years

and Thomas elects to retire as well.

Roberts - 62
Alito - 67
Gorush - 49
Two more at around 50

And Breyer is 78

And the Senate only needs 50 votes, and I don't see the Democrats taking three seats given how many they have to defend in 2018. By 2020 the damage will be multigenerational.

Potentially by 2020 we could be looking at 6-3 or worse for the next 20 years at least.

Elections do have consequences. Anyone who went third party or did not vote.

[exboyfil]

5. I voted for Bernie in the primary

and Clinton in the GE. I had to do some convincing to get my daughters to vote for Clinton because they did not appreciate the DNC putting their thumb on the scale during the primary.

I had to cajole my wife to vote for Clinton. If it had been almost any other Republican, she would have voted that way.

My entire family voted for Trump (mom, brother, SIL, siblings, cousins, aunts, etc). Even my SIL sat out the election because he could not vote for Clinton.

[Chasstev365]

6. I still rage that Mitch McConnell got away with blocking Merrick Garland

There must be payback for that at some point!

[exboyfil]

7. Going forward only seat

Supreme Court justices with control of Senate and the Presidency. On the off chance that the Dems win three Senate seats in 2018, shut all appointments down.

Unfortunately getting the Senate back in 2018 is unlikely.

The next one to four SCs are going to be picked by Trump in the next three and a half years (Kennedy, Ginsburg, Thomas, and perhaps Breyer).

[BigmanPigman]

8. Whatever happened to the idea about limiting terms on SCOTUS?

This was being discussed a few months ago but hasn't been in the news lately. Since all of the other government positions have limits based on age or terms in office why don't they? The founding fathers never expected a lot of things like partisanship by presidents and congress in choosing justices and the Electoral College not being a fair representation of the voting public.