WIth the Supreme Court term about to end on Thursday, and all of the tumult about the upcoming decision on the Affordable Care Act, and the decisions today on immigration, corporate spending in campaigns, and juvenile sentencing for life terms for murder fresh on one’s mind, it is again important to remember what most Americans don’t even know or realize: The Supreme Court determines the future, more than any part of American government!
A lifetime job, with total freedom to say and do what one wants, is a great power, and we are now suffering from the reality that Ronald Reagan may be dead for eight years, but two of his appointments to the Court (Antonin Scalia and Anthony Kennedy) are still dictating much of what happens in America; George H. W. Bush’s appointee, Clarence Thomas, is not going away anytime soon; and George W. Bush’s two appointments, Chief Justice John Roberts and Associate Justice Samuel Alito, will be around for at least two more decades on the Court, assuming good health!
And now with Scalia and Kennedy being 76, and Clinton appointees Ruth Bader Ginsberg being 79 and Stephen Breyer being 73, it is certain that one to four appointments are likely to be made by the winner of the 2012 election.
Can we afford President Romney shaping a Court that will be to the “right of Attila the Hun?”
It would destroy the chance for fairness, equity, humanity on the Court, and would continue the corporate conquest of American government going on with the Citizens United case, and the new Montana case just decided, that reaffirmed that earlier, disgraceful, decision!
It cannot be emphasized enough that NOTHING matters more than the Supreme Court and the federal circuit judges in this upcoming Presidential election! Economic policy and foreign policy are much less significant than constitutional law!
Obama and his supporters NEED to bring up this issue regularly, and never stop referring to it, with the hope that it will penetrate the brains of the American people!