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Anthony Kennedy Retiring
Winning!
All hail Trump and McConnell! Yes, it’s really happening! Whatever else President Donald Trump and Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell have done for us or to us, they will soon give us a conservative Supreme Court majority that could last for a generation. Kennedy is retiring, and thanks to Trump and McConnell, his replacement will be a Constitutional conservative.
I’ve been saying for a while now, give America 3% growth, and we will win in 2018 and confirm a conservative SCOTUS majority. The 3% growth is here, and so is the SCOTUS majority. I’m not sure we could ask for much more from a Republican president.
Published in GeneralFrom CNN:
Washington (CNN) Justice Anthony Kennedy, a conservative who provided key votes for same sex-marriage, abortion access and affirmative action, will retire from the Supreme Court.
The retirement is effective July 31, Kennedy said in a letter to President Donald Trump on Wednesday.
Kennedy’s decision to step down could transform the Supreme Court for generations. Trump will have his second opportunity to nominate a justice and will likely replace Kennedy with a young, conservative jurist. That would create a bloc of five staunch conservative justices who could move the court further to the right and cement a conservative majority for the foreseeable future.
The nomination battle will likely ignite a firestorm on Capitol Hill as it comes just a year after Republicans changed the rules of the Senate in order to push through the nomination of Justice Neil Gorsuch, Trump’s first nominee.A senior White House official said Trump will push for the swift confirmation of a new Supreme Court justice “before the midterm elections.”
I’d love to see Larsen–actually wanted her last time. So she’s likely out.
To quote Mr. Rogers, “It’s a beautiful day in the neighborhood – lala…..”
Might another conservative on the court tempt finger-in-the-wind John Roberts to drift further Left? If he thinks SCOTUS should be culturally representative of the electorate, rather than blind to extra-legal concerns, then perhaps we will see repetition of the Obamacare incident.
Other than Obamacare has Roberts really voted all that left? Are there other decisions I’m unaware of? My take on Roberts with Obamacare was that he was playing a longer game and attempting to force Congress to fix its own mistakes.
I’m not sure about drifting, but I view him as an obstacle to a full overturn of Roe. He’s a conservative, but he’s also a traditionalist.
I think Roberts leans right, he just shows a lot of deference to the other two Branches. If Congress did its damn job, would not need to lean on the SCOUTS so much!
He’s very much concerned with protecting the integrity of the court and that includes stare decisis.
Exactly what I was thinking. And he’s also not into making major waves, which is how I’m inclined to view his Obamacare writing.
He sided with the liberals on the cell phone warrant question, against the conservatives. For which I am very happy.
Exactly right. But there’s more to it than that. The Obamacare decision, Part I, was a tremendous and extraordinarily win for smaller-government conservatives. The Court’s almost total acquiescence in the knee-jerk resort to the Commerce Clause by Congress to fix every imagined ill in society from the New Deal on came to a screeching halt. That is a victory that Kennedy’s replacement will not retreat from.
Obamacare Part II, holding that the mandate was a valid tax, was correct, in my view, although the opposite decision would not have been outlandish. But in deciding that way, Roberts advanced an important tenet of judicial conservatism: don’t make the Supreme Court the ultimate arbiter if there is a plausible non-constitutional ground for decision. The Government had argued that the mandate was a tax, and there was considerable material in the legislative history showing that it had been considered in that vein on and off.
So, yeah. Roberts was holding Congress’ feet to the fire: “We are not going to come in here all ‘Judicial Supremacy’ on you, and we will assume that you passed the mandate under the taxing power rather than the Commerce Clause power to avoid unnecessarily tossing this law out. BUT, if you want to renounce the mandate as a tax–go ahead. THEN we will rule the whole thing unconstitutional. Your call.”
While. I think Trump has a good shot at putting another conservative on the court, you never know what they are until they actually get there.
All he had to do, once he decided to justify the individual mandate as a “tax”, was cite the well established principle that the court doesn’t rule on validity of a tax before it goes into effect.
i share the fear of people who’ve commented that we may get another Roberts style quisling–but I trust President Trump’s ” people sense’…
Pretty much the lesson of Kennedy, innit?
If FDR couldn’t do it, no one can today . . .
After Mitch’s run-in with the mob (hat tip to his wife Elaine), he probably knows how vital it is to put a stake in the heart of the uncivil left.
My bet it is a woman.
OMG . . . tell me there’s a black or Hispanic woman on the list . . .
To me that seems to be a legit concern. If it doesn’t happen swiftly, and if the Republicans don’t keep the Senate majority, it could be a while before Kennedy is replaced. Which I think means there would be tie votes as far as the Conservatives vs Libs on the Supreme bench.
Stad, I hope no-one ever calls you that. It’s a stupid and cruel way to speak of old people.
[self-redacted]
Best SCOTUS week in a long time!
So much winning!
Seen on Twitter: 9th Circuit Overrules Justice Kennedy’s retirement announcement.
Gorsuch didn’t potentially have the fate of Roe v. Wade in his hands.
It’s up to us Mainers to put enormous pressure on Collins to vote yes on Trump’s nominee. We’ll see.
Relitigating this here serves little purpose, but I have to speak in opposition. Roberts bent himself into a pretzel to save the law through a rather outlandish theory. It was not, IMO, “plausible” to rewrite the plain language of the law to change a “penalty” into a “tax,” as Scalia’s far more coherent dissent in support of a greater tenet of judicial conservatism noted. It is however illustrative of Robert’s desire to avoid “political” decisions, as I suspect we will again see if a Roe/Casey type case comes up again.
First reaction: Joy! Second reaction: Fear.
There was about 25 seconds between them.
Wonderful news, Jaime Lockett has it right, stick to the list and have a back up from the list because the left will go bananas on this. They’ll want to trade a pass for a Ginsberg replacement, and Republicans will be tempted but that would be a mistake, as old folks lose their wits they get more liberal so we need a real principled conservative. Hasn’t happened to me, I’m going in the opposite direction, but we have to plan for it. Still they can renig on any deal like the Democrats would.
Because they will want something in return for it. At the very least they should make McConnell and Trump grovel a bit to them just for fun. Though I imagine the major pressure will be on whether the new justice is pro-life or not. If they seem to overtly pro-life Collins might vote against them, and so might Murkowski (they both seem rather more pro-choice). Flake hates the new tariffs and has been holding up judges over it. This is one hell of a judge to hold up, and its not like he gives a hoot what with retirement.
My question is what will the Dems do to stop or slow this down? I hope they go for an old stile filibuster, I want to see each one of them stand up and talk for 24 hours straight.