Trump’s Victory Preserves Supreme Court’s Conservative Majority
Donald Trump’s presidential victory helps ensure the Supreme Court’s narrow conservative majority by making it possible for the new president to nominate a justice next year to fill the seat of the late Justice Antonin Scalia.
And with Republicans maintaining control of the Senate, Trump will have liberty in selecting someone with strong conservative credentials with assurance that his nominee will be confirmed.
The election dashes the hopes of liberals, who lost their best opportunity in more than 40 years to create a majority on the high court.
As the LA Times reports:
“The future of the Supreme Court’s ideological balance proved to be a critical factor for many Republican voters. In exit polls, about 1 in 5 voters said the Supreme Court appointments were “the most important factor” in their decision, and those voters favored Trump by a 57% to 40% margin, according to ABC News.
Now, the court’s ideological balance should remain largely as it has been for the past decade, with Justice Anthony M. Kennedy holding the deciding vote in the court’s biggest cases.
Kennedy generally leans to the right on issues such as campaign spending, criminal law, the death penalty, religion, business regulation and gun rights. But he has joined the court’s four liberals to uphold gay rights and to protect blacks from housing discrimination.”
To read more, go to LA Times
