Presidential election to determine Supreme Court's future path

If there is ever one important aspect of this current presidential election that has really been ignored, it is the issue of the U.S. Supreme Court. From The Washington Post:

For much of its term, the Supreme Court muted last year's noisy dissents, warmed to Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr.'s vision of narrow, incremental decisions and continued a slow but hardly steady move to the right.

But as justices finished their work last week, two overarching truths about the court remained unchanged: It is sharply divided ideologically on some of the most fundamental constitutional questions, and the coming presidential election will determine its future path.

A victory by the presumptive Democratic nominee, Barack Obama, would probably mean preserving the uneasy but roughly balanced status quo, since the justices who are considered most likely to retire are liberal. A win for his Republican counterpart, John McCain, could mean a fundamental shift to a consistently conservative majority ready to take on past court rulings on abortion rights, affirmative action and other issues important to the right.

"If there's one thing you can see about this court, it is that it still sits on a knife's edge," said Jeffrey L. Fisher, a Stanford University law professor who argued three cases before the justices this year.

Right now, the U.S. Supreme Court has four liberal justices with John Paul Stevens, David Souter, Ruth Bader Ginsburg and Stephen Breyer, and four conservative justices with Chief Justice John Roberts, Antonin Scalia, Clarence Thomas, and Samuel Alito. The swing justice here in Antony Kennedy. It is usually Justice Kennedy that is providing that tipping vote in the 5-4 Court decisions--the other justices might as well go home!

The issue with the presidential election is that if there are any justices that will be retiring, they will probably be the liberal justices. Justice Stevens is 88 years old and one of the oldest and longest serving members of the Court. Justice Ginsburg is 75 years old. If John McCain is elected president, he will have the opportunity to shift the court to the extreme right, if he is given the opportunity to nominate one or two justices. In other words, Roe vs. Wade will be overturned, civil liberties will probably be curtailed, and the federal government will be given more power to domestically spy on its citizens. These are just some extreme examples of what a McCain-stacked court could do to this country.

Is this the direction you want the U.S. Supreme Court to be heading?