Bloodless Coup

Goldstein on the Court and the 2008 Election

Tom Goldstein discusses how post-2008 retirements, and who has the power to choose the replacements for retiring justices, will affect the Supreme Court here. He expects the next president to replace Justice Stevens and Justice Souter, and possibly (if the next president is a Democrat) Justice Ginsburg. So obviously you could have three younger Democratic appointees who will be in a position to enforce the current "detente" between the left and the right factions on the Court for many years to come. Or you could have a huge swing to right on the Court if a Republican president is elected in 2008.

I would quibble though with his interpretations of the shifts we've seen over the last 20 years. There might have only been one glaring case of a new justice being hugely different from the man he replaced (Thomas replacing Marshall) but most of the rest have been pretty clearly more conservative than their predecessors, and that's definitey pushed the Court to the right. In fact its interesting to keep in mind that there have only been 2 Democratic appointees to the Court since the 1960s - and only one of those 2 was more liberal than the justice she replaced. The shift we've seen over the last couple of decades has been considerable. And if a Republican gets to replace Stevens, Souter and possibly Ginsburg - look out.