WHEN Anthony Kennedy announced his retirement from the Supreme Court on June 27th, Democrats rushed to the barricades. “This is the fight of our lives,” announced Senator Elizabeth Warren of Massachusetts. Senator Kamala Harris proposed delaying confirmation hearings for Mr Kennedy’s successor until after the next election, which falls in November 2018, just as Mitch McConnell, the Senate majority leader, did with Barack Obama’s nominee in 2016. In practice, Democrats cannot stop Mr Trump from placing his second justice on the country’s highest court. Mr McConnell is serenely untroubled by the precedent he set, and President Donald Trump plans to announce his nominee on July 9th. When the nominee is confirmed in the autumn, he or she should cement a reliable conservative majority that could, among other things, make abortion less accessible and federal agencies less powerful, though not quite in the way that many seem to expect.
The next justice will almost certainly be young (Mr Trump...Continue reading
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