Justice Anthony Kennedy was known more as a swing voter than a conservative on the Supreme Court, which underscores just how big his retirement means to President Trump.
The president now has the opportunity to select another Scalia-style justice who will solidify the conservative leanings of the court for decades to come.
“A Trump nominee is likely to be far more conservative than Kennedy, who, though appointed by President Reagan, voted with the court’s liberals in some key cases,” reported wpsu.org.
Excluding Kennedy, the court was split between four conservatives and four liberals, meaning that Trump could make a fatal blow to the influence of the current liberal justices, who loosely held on to power with Kennedy’s occasional swing vote.
Likewise, conservative judges were often dependent on Kennedy to win a majority.
This in itself speaks of the significance of the 2016 presidential election, and how its outcome will shape the direction of America for centuries.
To create a list of potential picks, President Trump has previously worked with the Federalist Society, of which the late Justice Antonin Scalia was a member.
Scalia was likely the most hated justice by left-wing activists due to his originalist and textualist stances with the US Constitution, in other words, his strict adherence to the written law and the Founding Father’s understanding of it.
Trump’s pick wll likely come from the same cloth.
“The Federalist Society for Law and Public Policy Studies is a group of conservatives and libertarians interested in the current state of the legal order,” the group’s web site states. “It is founded on the principles that the state exists to preserve freedom, that the separation of governmental powers is central to our Constitution, and that it is emphatically the province and duty of the judiciary to say what the law is, not what it should be.”
Trump has already appointed many of its members as federal judges.
The Emergency Election Sale is now live! Get 30% to 60% off our most popular products today!