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Jul. 1st, 2005 09:42 amO'Connor's retirement will have a major effect, of course. Go through all the 5-4 decisions of the last several years (eleven years since the last retirement, note) and see in how many cases she voted with the majority and the Unholy Trinity plus Kennedy dissented. (She also voted with them a fair bit of the time. She was, after all, a Reagan appointee.)
It's safe to assume the wingnuttery of any Bush appointee, so there will now be a quartet of evil on the court. Anthony Kennedy will now become the swing vote that O'Connor was, and he's a good deal more conservative than her, so the court has shifted significantly.
It's not the Alamo for abortion rights -- yet. Planned Parenthood v Casey was a 5-4 decision in 1992. However, since that time White (one of the 4 who dissented) was replaced by Ginsberg, and Blackmun, who concurred, was replaced by Breyer, and presumably both of them would concur with a similar opinion today -- so the same case in 2005 would have been 6-3, with only the Unholy Trinity dissenting. Unless Kennedy has changed his mind in the intervening time, that is.
Rehnquist will likely also retire in the next year or two, which will increase the effectiveness of the chief justice (Scalia, for all that I despise him, is much smarter and shrewder than Rehnquist) but won't otherwise tilt the ideological makeup much.
What passes for the left side of the court today are Breyer and Ginsberg, plus Souter (a quite reasonable GHWB appointee)... and John Paul Stevens, who was appointed by Gerald Ford in 1975 and is now eighty-five years old.
If Stevens retires before 2009, the fifth most liberal justice on the court will be Clarence Thomas.
Pray that Stevens has an excellent physician.
It's safe to assume the wingnuttery of any Bush appointee, so there will now be a quartet of evil on the court. Anthony Kennedy will now become the swing vote that O'Connor was, and he's a good deal more conservative than her, so the court has shifted significantly.
It's not the Alamo for abortion rights -- yet. Planned Parenthood v Casey was a 5-4 decision in 1992. However, since that time White (one of the 4 who dissented) was replaced by Ginsberg, and Blackmun, who concurred, was replaced by Breyer, and presumably both of them would concur with a similar opinion today -- so the same case in 2005 would have been 6-3, with only the Unholy Trinity dissenting. Unless Kennedy has changed his mind in the intervening time, that is.
Rehnquist will likely also retire in the next year or two, which will increase the effectiveness of the chief justice (Scalia, for all that I despise him, is much smarter and shrewder than Rehnquist) but won't otherwise tilt the ideological makeup much.
What passes for the left side of the court today are Breyer and Ginsberg, plus Souter (a quite reasonable GHWB appointee)... and John Paul Stevens, who was appointed by Gerald Ford in 1975 and is now eighty-five years old.
If Stevens retires before 2009, the fifth most liberal justice on the court will be Clarence Thomas.
Pray that Stevens has an excellent physician.
