'04 Election Effect on Supreme Court
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Glad to join the ACS and this blog.
Some leading scholars believe the election won't have much impact on the direction of the Court.
http://www.law.com/jsp/printerfriendly.jsp?c=LawArticle&t=PrinterFriendlyArticle&cid=1095434441602
Liberal Georgetown University Law Center professor Mark Tushnet has even offered the heretical and hotly contested view that the outcome Nov. 2 will be a wash for the Court. "The politics in the Senate make it likely that a newly appointed Democratic Supreme Court justice would look a lot like a newly appointed Republican one," Tushnet wrote in the current issue of Legal Affairs magazine.
Glad to join the ACS and this blog.
Some leading scholars believe the election won't have much impact on the direction of the Court.
http://www.law.com/jsp/printerfriendly.jsp?c=LawArticle&t=PrinterFriendlyArticle&cid=1095434441602
Liberal Georgetown University Law Center professor Mark Tushnet has even offered the heretical and hotly contested view that the outcome Nov. 2 will be a wash for the Court. "The politics in the Senate make it likely that a newly appointed Democratic Supreme Court justice would look a lot like a newly appointed Republican one," Tushnet wrote in the current issue of Legal Affairs magazine.
2 Comments:
James Simon's 1995 book, "The Center Holds," (used at Amazon http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/detail/-/0684802937/qid=1096301259/sr=1-1/ref=sr_1_1/103-1121457-2465410?v=glance&s=books) makes a similar point: the confirmation process, along with the long tenure of justices (which means that most of them have been there a while), tends to result in damping the effects on the court of rapid shifts in the broader political arena.
I wouldn't say the effect is nil, though.
If Kerry wins, I think it'll be an awkward pick, because he'll probably have to reach to find a Hispanic jurist with the experience and political credentials that he'd need to pass easily. If Bush wins, we'll likely get to find out if Alberto Gonzalez really does believe that the Geneva Convention or any other rule of law doesn't count in the war on terror, because he's going to be appointed in no time.
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