President Trump was always going to pick a conservative for the Supreme Court. The only question has been whether to replace Justice Anthony Kennedy with a “business conservative” or a “religious conservative.” No one seriously thought that he would consider a moderate, a liberal or an ideologically ambiguous replacement.
The next Democratic president will nominate a liberal to the court in the hope of tilting it in the other direction. Everyone is so accustomed to this state of affairs that people have forgotten to question it.
But we wonder whether a Supreme Court that has come to be rigidly divided by both ideology and party can sustain public confidence for much longer. CONT.
Lee Epstein (Washington U.) & Eric Posner (U. of Chicago), New York Times