By Adam Liptak:
“On the brink of having the first liberal-leaning Supreme Court in decades, the judicial left has now been banished to the wilderness for perhaps decades more,” said Barry Friedman, a law professor at New York University. “It is difficult seeing a path to anything other than a yet more conservative court for the imaginable future.”
The balance of power at the Supreme Court could truly shift if there is a second vacancy while Mr. Trump is president. That appears entirely possible.
Justice Ginsburg, who was harshly critical of Mr. Trump and seemed to predict a victory for Hillary Clinton, will face second-guessing over her decision to stay on the court rather than let Mr. Obama try to appoint her successor.
Other retirements are possible, too. Justice Kennedy, the member of the court at its ideological center, is 80.
“Until some combination of Kennedy, Ginsburg, and Breyer leave, the appointment of a Scalia clone will simply return us to the prior status quo,” said Sanford Levinson, a law professor at the University of Texas.
But should one of those justices retire or die during a Trump presidency, the Roberts court could enter an entirely different phase.
“In the worst case, we end up with a 7-2 conservative court, and a relatively young one at that,” Professor Friedman said. “This could be a typhoon for the Supreme Court. An already very conservative jurisprudence will deepen and may broaden, encompassing areas that had long been resistant, such as abortion rights.”
The Full Story (November 9, 2016)
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