As Justice Souter is ready to retire in June of this year, I can already hear Conservatives rally behind rejecting any nominee President Obama wishes to place before the United States Senate. When Chief Justice Rehnquist and Justice O’Connor left the Court under President Bush there was speculation that President Bush would cause the court to move further right. When Obama makes his selection and the Senate approves the appointment to the nation’s highest Court, the Court will not move further left.
Justice Souter, along with Justices Ginsburg, Breyer, and Stevens are the liberal left wing of the United States Supreme Court. President Obama, a liberal himself, is unlikely to appoint a conservative or centrist justice to the Supreme Court (Justice Kennedy occupies the centrist position on the Court.) The worst that could happen for the President, as it happeend for Nixon and George H.W. Bush, is that his liberal appointment to the Supreme Court will turn out to be a centrist or conservative Justice. This is exactly what happened with ex-President Nixon’s appointment of Justice Stevens.
Conservatives should not attempt to put up a serious opposition to the President’s appointment. For one thing, the opposition might come back to hurt conservative Republicans in Representative elections. By only putting up the minimal opposition to his appointee, conservatives can both get their point across and still save face before the American people. Yet, there is a more important reason for why conservatives should not seriously oppose whomever President Obama wishes to appoint. As a Professor of mine said when Chief Justice Roberts and Justice Alito were appointed to the Court, it doesn’t matter if Atilla the Hun is appointed to the Supreme Court it won’t change the make up. There are still nine Justices on the Supreme Court and it takes five to make a decision on any case. As long as Kennedy remains a right leaning centrist on the important issues to conservatives, it doesn’t matter who Obama appoints to fill the vacancy left by Souter in June.
At first I wasn’t sure if you were being tongue-in-cheek with this post or not. In the end, after reading a few of your other posts, I decided you weren’t. Given that you have a great many conservative views I agree with, I thought it prudent to engage you in a discussion on this one.
“As a Professor of mine said when Chief Justice Roberts and Justice Alito were appointed to the Court, it doesn’t matter if Atilla the Hun is appointed to the Supreme Court it won’t change the make up. There are still nine Justices on the Supreme Court and it takes five to make a decision on any case”
In the short term, this is true. A single person will only change 1/9 of the collective decisions of the court. However, in the long term, if every 5 years we appoint a new ancient conqueror, after a mere 25 years we will have the majority of decisions made by barbarians. By your logic above, it wouldn’t matter if an entire branch of our government was run by deranged amoral murderers – after all, it’s only 1/3, and wouldn’t change the make up.
As for saving face, it is far less important to ‘save face’ with other citizens and far more important to engage them in useful debate, sway their opinion, and educate them. One can oppose an appointee tactfully and on rational grounds.
I disagree. Justice Souter is a liberal Supreme Court Justice, replacing him with yet another liberal will not change the make up of the High Court. We know that Obama will appoint a liberal, most likely equal to Justice Stevens. The only way the Supreme Court is changed is if Obama appoints a person who ends up being Justice Stevens, and ends up on the opposing end of the President. Since there are four liberals and four conservatives, the most significant change would come when Justice Kennedy leaves the bench.
Also, just because we appoint a new member to the Supreme Court, doesn’t mean that they will now live forever.
Assume for moment that this appointment is the only appointment for Obama. Even if he isn’t, as long as none of the conservatives or Justice Kennedy leave the High Court, it will remain in the current balance. Unless any new appointments are wolves in sheep clothes.
Good reply, I see your point now. The devil is in the details, I suppose. I was arguing principle – we should fight for people with correct values any time we can. Your argument is on specifics – it doesn’t matter who is appointed because they most likely will be no different from the individual leaving, so you might as well not throw a fit about it.
Fight the fights that you can win and just hope that those that you can’t don’t end up bring about the end of days.