Supreme Court's Docket Is a Super Tuesday Reminder
Abortion, immigration and corporate power are all on the justices’ calendar this week, and for the next 4 to 40 years.
Just getting started.
Photographer: Mario Tama/Getty ImagesIf you’re voting on Super Tuesday, the Supreme Court calendar has a message for you. This week, the court will consider a raft of blockbuster cases on immigration, abortion, and the future of the Consumer Finance Protection Bureau. Today, the court also accepted a case on the fate of the Affordable Care Act. The message could not be clearer: unless Democrats elect a president whose coattails produce a Senate majority, the future of the Supreme Court is going to be intensely conservative, and it’s going to have a major effect on the future of our politics.
Traditionally, Democrats have paid less attention to the composition of the Supreme Court as a campaign issue than have Republicans. That’s been a mistake. For decades, liberals won landmark Supreme Court victories on the occasionally liberal tendencies of two Ronald Reagan appointees, Justices Sandra Day O’Connor and Anthony Kennedy. Those days are behind us. President Donald Trump’s Supreme Court nominees, Justices Neil Gorsuch and Brett Kavanaugh, won’t be softening their hardline conservatism in the foreseeable future.