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How the first liberal Supreme Court in a generation could reshape America

by Dylan Matthews
August 22, 2016

Odds are that very soon, the Supreme Court will become something it hasn’t been in nearly 50 years: made up of a majority of Democratic-appointed justices.

Ever since Abe Fortas’s resignation in 1969, the Court has either been split down the middle or, more often, made up primarily of Republican appointees. Some of those Republican appointees nonetheless turned out to be liberals, but even taking that into account, the Court hasn’t been majority liberal since 1971, when William Rehnquist and Lewis Powell joined.

That hasn’t stopped the Court from evolving in a progressive direction at times. In 1973, GOP appointee Harry Blackmun authored Roe v. Wade, drawing only two dissents; from 1996’s Romer v. Evans to 2015’s Obergefell v. Hodges, Anthony Kennedy and the Court’s liberals steadily expanded the rights of LGBTQ Americans.

But for the most part, over the past half-century liberals have been playing defense as an organized and well-planned movement of conservatives has limited the scope of rights trumpeted by liberals, expanded the power of the state in criminal justice, and issued more business-friendly rulings on campaign finance and regulatory issues.

The Court ruled that states didn't have to give poor black and Latino school districts the same funding as rich white districts. It ruled that school resegregation achieved through white flight to wealthy suburbs was just fine. It ruled that despite declaring abortion a fundamental right, that didn’t mean Medicaid had to extend that right to poor women, and then it reversed course on treating abortion as a fundamental right at all. It struck down the death penalty but then brought it back four years later.

And in more recent years, it’s gutted the Voting Rights Act, struck down limits on campaign donations by corporations, strangled Medicaid expansion in the crib, and for the first time in American history declared an individual right to own guns.

All that could be about to change.

The Supreme Court is truly at a tipping point


Bill O'Leary/The Washington Post via Getty Images Hillary Clinton is likely to replace both Anthony Kennedy and Ruth Bader Ginsburg.

The unfilled vacancy of Antonin Scalia’s seat combined with a Hillary Clinton victory in November could set the Court on a new course.

Merrick Garland, nominated by Barack Obama in March, has yet to face a vote. But though Senate Republicans have denied they’ll confirm him in the lame-duck session this winter, should Hillary Clinton win they might be tempted to confirm him lest she name a more liberal nominee. Either way, the result is a moderate to liberal justice in Scalia’s seat, moving the Court appreciably to the left.

Clinton also stands a good chance of replacing the moderate-to-conservative Anthony Kennedy (who recently turned 80) with a reliable liberal, and keeping Ruth Bader Ginsburg (83 and a two-time cancer survivor) and Stephen Breyer’s (78) seats in liberal hands. The result would be a solid 6-3 liberal majority of a kind not seen in many decades.

The implications of such a shift are massive. The Court is not a legislative body, and it can’t simply undo all of the conservative rulings of recent decades. The doctrine of stare decisis means the Court tries not to contradict its past rulings except in rare cases. But after speaking to a number of prominent legal scholars and experts, it appears there are some notable areas where a liberal Court could make a significant difference.

A liberal Court could end long-term solitary confinement. It could mandate better prison conditions in general, making it more costly to maintain mass incarceration. It could conceivably end the death penalty. It could uphold tough state campaign finance rules and start to move away from Citizens United. It could start to develop a robust right to vote and limit gerrymandering. It could strengthen abortion rights, moving toward viewing abortion rights as a matter of equal protection for women.

If Donald Trump wins in November, this is all moot. But if he loses, as polls increasingly indicate, the dawn of a new era of liberal jurisprudence could be upon us.

Much more at:

http://www.vox.com/2016/8/22/12484000/supreme-court-liberal-clinton