Court stage set for ideological combat
The following editorial is from the New York Daily News:
Justice Anthony Kennedy was never the liberal stalwart progressives prayed for or the down-the-line conservative those who put him on the Supreme Court sought.
But in his 30 years on the court his votes and rulings, from gay rights to Citizens United — and despite helping install George W. Bush in the White House in Bush vs. Gore — Kennedy served as a steady reminder that the court existed for the essential purpose of guiding the nation based on law and precedent applied independent of political party or klatch.
The notion of an impartial Supreme Court feels as elusive as ever with Kennedy’s July 31 retirement. The great divider, President Trump will too gladly advance the Court’s transformation into a body that stands split along partisan lines on questions of law and liberty.
Trump wields the necessary (if slim) Senate majority, and a list of nominees vetted by conservative groups.
Confirmed unanimously after Democrats blocked lightning rod Robert Bork, Kennedy mostly affirmed conservative doctrine and GOP prerogatives. In the session just ended, he upheld Trump’s travel ban, voted against unions, supported the pro-life position on pregnancy centers and law enforcement in a search and privacy case.
But he also frustrated conservatives by taking the center on abortion, upholding Roe v. Wade while supporting some restrictions. Meanwhile, he became a surprisingly progressive justice on LGBT issues. On all four of the court’s gay rights rulings — from overturning sodomy laws to gay marriage — Kennedy wrote every one.
Now bare-knuckled ideological purity — on corporate and church power, reproductive rights, property, privacy and more — will prevail.
Senate Republicans have smashed norm after norm to keep a grip on judicial appointments — culminating in leaving a seat vacant for more than a year following Antonin Scalia’s death, not even giving President Obama’s nominee Merrick Garland a hearing and thus permitting Trump to appoint Neil Gorsuch.
Democrats understandably itch to tit for tat, and should at least wait and see who Trump has in store. Better to scrap like hell to take both chambers of Congress this November than fight a war unarmed.