What's Important 16
Sixteenth in a series.Today's installment is courtesy of Ruth Marcus, talking about the recent Supreme Court ruling upholding the Guantanamo detainees' right to habeas corpus (emphasis mine):
Obama hailed the ruling for showing that "a state can't just hold you for any reason without charging you and without giving you any kind of due process -- that's the essence of who we are."
McCain was initially mild, saying only that the decision "obviously concerns me." By the next day, though, he was as over the top as Justice Antonin Scalia, who warned that the court's action "will almost certainly cause more Americans to be killed." Legal reasoning -- or ad copy for the Republican National Committee?
In any event, McCain got the point. "One of the worst decisions in the history of this country," he thundered last Friday. ...
McCain lamented that the court was giving rights to "enemy combatants . . . ardently seeking to destroy the United States of America and all that we stand for and believe in." Strikes me that a big part of what we believe in is the rule of law and the notion that people can't be held indefinitely without a fair hearing. ...
The next president is almost certain to have one appointment, and quite possibly two or more. In addition, the oldest justices are also the most liberal: John Paul Stevens is 88; Ruth Bader Ginsburg is 75.As a result, a President McCain could shift the court significantly to the right, while a President Obama would be lucky, even with a Democratic Senate, to nudge the court even a bit in a liberal direction. More likely, he would merely be able to maintain the shaky, conservative-leaning status quo.
1 Comments:
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At 2:30 PM, June 20, 2008
Barry Leiba had this to say...
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<-- Older Post ^ Home Newer Post -->Well, it's almost certain that Justice Stevens will retire or die in the next eight years, yes. So President Obama will have to replace him... but I'll note that, while he's considered one of the liberals on the Court, he was actually appointed by Gerald Ford. Times have changed.
Apart from Stevens, the court comprises appointees from the four latest presidents, two each. And the two Reagan appointees, the Evil Scalia and Anthony Kennedy, are not much younger than Justice Ginsburg is (72 and 71, respectively). There's no telling what their health will look like in five or six years, and Obama might wind up replacing any or all of them over two terms.
If he got to replace Scalia, now that would be wonderful!
(A bit of trivia while we're here: Carter was the first president in 100 years to get no Supreme Court appointments. Even Garfield, who only served six and a half months, wound up with one.)
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