Anthony M. Kennedy, Associate Justice of the Supreme Court of the United States, swears in Supreme Court Justice Neil M. Gorsuch on Monday, April 10, 2017, in the Rose Garden of the White House in Washington, D.C. Also shown, Gorsuch’s wife Louise stands on stage holding a family Bible. Justice Gorsuch is the Supreme Court’s 113th justice. (Official White House Photo by Shealah Craighead)
Writing at The American Conservative, Pat Buchanan explains how conservative Supreme Court jurisprudence may finally reemerge after 60 years in the shadow of the legacy of liberal Chief Justice Earl Warren. With the nomination of Judge Brett Kavanaugh to the bench, President Trump has made a powerful step that Pat says could “ring down the curtain on the social revolution the court has been imposing.” President Trump’s first Supreme Court appointment, Neil Gorsuch has proven to be a powerful ally to conservatives. Replacing the fickle vote of Anthony Kennedy with another powerful conservative could bury the Warren court forever. He writes (abridged):
liberalism’s great strategic ally and asset of 60 years, the judicial dictatorship erected by Earl Warren and associates, may be about to fall.
Judicial supremacy may be on the way out.
Another constitutionalist on the court, in the tradition of Antonin Scalia, could ring down the curtain on the social revolution the court has been imposing since the salad days of Chief Justice Earl Warren.
Among the changes Warren’s court and its successors succeeded in imposing: The de-Christianization of all public institutions in America. The social war of the 1970s over forced busing for racial balance in the public schools. The creation, ex nihilo, of new constitutional rights, first to an abortion, and then to homosexuality and same-sex marriage.
Of 15 justices Republican Presidents have named since World War II, five — Warren, Brennan, Blackmun, Stevens and Souter — became liberal activists. Kennedy and Sandra Day O’Connor, both Reagan choices, became swing justices and voted with the court’s liberals on critical social issues.
Of seven justices named by LBJ, Clinton and Obama, every one — Thurgood Marshall, Arthur Goldberg, Abe Fortas, Ruth Ginsburg, Stephen Breyer, Elena Kagan, Sonia Sotomayor — turned out to be predictably and consistently liberal.
It was Trump’s 2016 pledge to draw his nominees to the high court from a list of 20 judges and scholars supplied by the Federalist Society that reassured conservatives and helped him unite his party and get elected.
On the issue of judicial nominees and justices to the Supreme Court, Trump has kept his word.
And the next Supreme Court may one day be called the Trump Court.
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