{"id":1316132,"date":"2019-10-26T17:00:02","date_gmt":"2019-10-26T23:00:02","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.postindependent.com\/parker-column-the-supreme-battle-before-us\/"},"modified":"2019-10-26T17:00:02","modified_gmt":"2019-10-26T23:00:02","slug":"parker-column-the-supreme-battle-before-us","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kske\/local-news\/parker-column-the-supreme-battle-before-us\/","title":{"rendered":"Parker column: The supreme battle before us"},"content":{"rendered":"
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WASHINGTON \u2014 As the 2020 election comes into sharper focus, one issue that seems to animate both sides \u2014 the Supreme Court \u2014 is once again taking center stage.<\/p>\n

In 2016, Republicans swept Donald Trump into office largely on the promise of nominating conservative-originalist justices. Exit polls showed that 26% of Republicans voted for Trump because of the high court, their faith perhaps rooted in a shortlist of potential nominees Trump had proffered during the campaign.<\/p>\n

The list had caused some controversy because the staunchly conservative Federalist Society and Heritage Foundation had helped compile it. But the outsourcing was hardly surprising for a future president who had no ideological anchor or moral compass, not to mention any familiarity with the judiciary or its constitutional underpinnings.<\/p>\n

Trump continued to receive guidance after his election and ultimately nominated Justices Neil Gorsuch and Brett Kavanaugh, the latter of whom Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Chuck Grassley called \u201cthe most qualified nominee in our nation\u2019s history.\u201d<\/p>\n

Now, a new shortlist has emerged, this time from a liberal group called Demand Justice. Apparently seeing the influence of the Federalist Society \u2014 and the election that resulted \u2014 the group has compiled its own suggested nominees to pressure Democratic candidates into releasing their own, thus giving primary voters a sense of their commitment to progressive principles. The banner leading its website direly declares that the Supreme Court \u201chas been hijacked, democracy is at stake, and it\u2019s time for progressives to fight back.\u201d<\/p>\n

Such hysterical claims seem misplaced in light of a new Marquette University Law School study, which found that the judiciary is the most trusted of the three branches of government \u2014 by a large margin. The study also found that those who pay greater attention to current events have more confidence in the high court, as do those more familiar with the Supreme Court and its justices.<\/p>\n

Not surprisingly, the poll also showed that highly partisan respondents see the court as either too liberal or too conservative. But between the extremes, Americans are comfortable with the court\u2019s more-or-less even makeup. Nearly two-thirds of those polled said the Supreme Court justices base their decisions on the law rather than politics. To that description, I would add \u201cfacts.\u201d The facts of a given case guide a judge\u2019s deliberations and conclusions.<\/p>\n

The Marquette poll also asked whether the number of justices on the high court should be increased, as some Democratic candidates have suggested, obviously to outweigh the influence of the current conservative majority. Fifty-seven percent of respondents were opposed.<\/p>\n

This past July, opposition to \u201ccourt packing\u201d was articulated by none other than progressive heroine Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg. In an interview with NPR, she said that increasing the number of justices would be damaging to the court and the country.<\/p>\n

\u201cIf anything would make the court look partisan,\u201d she said, \u201cit would be that \u2014 one side saying, \u2018when we\u2019re in power, we\u2019re going to enlarge the number of judges, so we would have more people who would vote the way we want them to.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n

Ginsburg\u2019s comments speak to the importance of an independent judiciary, which, in the Supreme Court\u2019s case, is further safeguarded by the justices\u2019 life tenures and the fact that Congress can\u2019t reduce their salaries, potentially in retaliation for a ruling it doesn\u2019t like. These protections are enshrined in the U.S. Constitution.<\/p>\n

Nevertheless, the Marquette study found that 72% of respondents prefer term limits to lifetime appointments. Any such change would require a constitutional amendment, which doesn\u2019t worry Ginsburg. In the same interview, she said: \u201cOur Constitution is powerfully hard to amend.\u201d Indeed, an amendment would require the approval of two-thirds of the Senate and House and three-fourths of state legislatures.<\/p>\n

Given the relatively high level of trust in the Supreme Court \u2014 and the majority view that the court rules by law rather than by politics \u2014 Demand Justice\u2019s shortlist seems way off base. Only eight out of the 32 people listed are currently judges, and the group opposes nominees with any corporate experience. The list is heavy with activists \u2014 public defenders, public interest lawyers, academics and plaintiff lawyers.<\/p>\n

Here\u2019s the problem: When people have a judicial background, there\u2019s a record by which to judge their philosophy and judicial temperament, roughly defined as respect for the law, for other judges and for the litigants. And while the folks at Demand Justice don\u2019t seem to share these concerns, they\u2019re right to want to see the Democratic candidates\u2019 lists. One would hope the Democratic nominee would favor experienced judges whose records can be assessed \u2014 and whose philosophy closely reflects the wisdom of the notorious RBG.<\/p>\n

Kathleen Parker\u2019s email address is kathleenparker@washpost.com<\/a>.<\/p>\n

via:: Post Independent<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

WASHINGTON \u2014 As the 2020 election comes into sharper focus, one issue that seems to animate both sides \u2014 the Supreme Court \u2014 is once again taking center stage. In 2016, Republicans swept Donald Trump into office largely on the promise of nominating conservative-originalist justices. Exit polls showed that 26% of Republicans voted for Trump […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[160],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1316132","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","category-local-news"],"acf":[],"publishpress_future_action":{"enabled":false,"date":"2026-09-06 15:58:02","action":"change-status","newStatus":"draft","terms":[],"taxonomy":"category","extraData":[]},"publishpress_future_workflow_manual_trigger":{"enabledWorkflows":[]},"distributor_meta":false,"distributor_terms":false,"distributor_media":false,"distributor_original_site_name":"KSKE Ski Country","distributor_original_site_url":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kske","push-errors":false,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kske\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1316132","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kske\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kske\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kske\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kske\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1316132"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kske\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1316132\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kske\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1316132"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kske\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1316132"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kske\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1316132"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}