The Next Supreme Court Justice

We are in the early stages of selecting the Justice who will replace John Paul Stevens on the high court. Yet whomever that shall be is almost unimportant. President Barack Obama will almost certainly get the one he wants. And it will not likely affect the makeup of the Supreme Court.

Justice Stevens was one of the sternest liberals on the bench and he will almost certainly be replaced by someone similar. It is not likely that a leftist nominee will ever gravitate rightward; that concept appears driven only right to left for some reason, when a philosophical change does occur. So any real change on the Supreme Court will not happen until, perhaps, the next opening comes up.

Which is what makes the 2012 election so important. As it stands today, there is not much chance of another opening before that point. If the President is reelected and there is no paradigm shift in the Congress brought on by the voters in the next two clashes, it is then that we might see a substantial change in the Court's political/philosophical bent.

It is a truly scary proposition in light of the lifetime appointment of Supreme Court Justices. This is supposed to make for an independent judiciary, and, if the right folks are on board, it can serve a check on federal power. Yet if the wrong people are in the black robes, it can be devastation to any useful sense of right and wrong in our laws and our culture.

No less a civil libertarian than Thomas Jefferson said that the greatest threat to our freedoms came from the Supreme Court. We would do well to remember that in the coming elections.