The Supreme Court sometimes affects consumer law and policy, so our readers may be interested in this piece by law professor Erwin Chemerinsky (pictured to the right). Chemerinsky urges Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg to quit the Supreme Court after it has finished its work early this summer. Quitting then, Chemerinsky says, would allow the President and the Senate to replace Justice Ginsberg before the 2014 mid-term elections when the Republican party may take over the Senate, making a future Supreme Court appointment (even from a Democratic president) less likely to share Chemerinsky's (and other political liberals') political-legal views. An excerpt:
So long as the Democrats control the Senate, President Obama can have virtually anyone he wants confirmed for the Supreme Court. There has been only one filibuster against a Supreme Court nominee, and that was to block Justice Abe Fortas' elevation to chief justice, not to block his initial appointment. There were 48 votes against Thomas and 42 against Alito, but Democrats filibustered neither. Besides, if Democrats have control of the Senate, they could change the rules to eliminate the filibuster for Supreme Court nominees, just as they did for lower federal court judges and presidential appointments to executive positions. … Some might question whether a justice should be so calculating in choosing when to retire. But not doing so ignores the reality that ideology matters enormously in Supreme Court decision-making. This is nothing new; ideology always has mattered, and which president fills vacancies on the court can have an impact for decades. If, for example, Al Gore or John Kerry rather than President George W. Bush had replaced William Rehnquist and Sandra Day O'Connor in 2005, a liberal majority would likely have endured on the court for the next few decades. Conversely, if John McCain had replaced David Souter and John Paul Stevens, there would be a solid conservative majority and Roe vs. Wade surely would have been overruled already.
