By Jim Campbell
February 19, 2018
Justice Anthony Anthony Kennedy has always been considered a moderate conservative on the Supreme Court.
There is not certainty as to when he will actually retire, but in doing so this will give President Trump another justice who will interpret the Constitution as originally attended by our founding fathers.
Kennedy speaks at his swearing-in ceremony, Feb. 18, 1988, alongside President Ronald Reagan, Chief Justice Rehnquist, and his wife Mary.
WASHINGTON — Supreme Court justices say they do not act politically when they decide cases. But they freely admit to taking account of politics in deciding when to retire.
Most justices, for instance, try to step down under politically like-minded presidents.
“That’s not 100 percent true,” Chief Justice William H. Rehnquist said in 1999, six years before he died, “but it certainly is true in more cases than not.”
Such political calculations are perfectly proper, he said, as “deciding when to step down from the court is not a judicial act.”
For the second year in a row, rumors that Justice Anthony M. Kennedy may retire from the Supreme Court are sweeping Washington.
He is 81, and he is doubtless weighing many factors in deciding whether to stay.
Among them, experts in judicial behavior said, are the tug of party loyalty, the preservation of his judicial legacy and how close his retirement would be to a presidential election.
Justice Kennedy has long–held the decisive vote in many of the Supreme Court’s most contested and consequential cases, and his retirement would give President Trump the opportunity to move the court sharply to the right.
If Justice Kennedy steps down, the confirmation fight over his successor will be titanic.
See the entire article below.
Justices often try to retire when the president is of the same party as the one who appointed them.
Justice Kennedy was appointed by President Ronald Reagan, a Republican. President Trump may be an unconventional Republican, but he is a Republican.
Justices also try to retire early in a president’s term, generally in the first two years, according to a 2010 study by Ross M. Stolzenberg, a demographer at the University of Chicago, and James T. Lindgren, a law professor at Northwestern.
The study considered justices who served between 1789 and 2006.
“If the incumbent president is of the same party as the president who nominated the justice to the court, and if the incumbent president is in the first two years of a four-year presidential term,” the study found, “then the justice has odds of resignation that are about 2.6 times higher than when these two conditions are not met.”
Justices also take account of who controls the Senate and its internal rules.
“If I resign any time this year,” Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg said in the fall of 2014, less than two years into President Obama’s second term, “he could not successfully appoint anyone I would like to see in the court.”
“So anybody who thinks that if I step down, Obama could appoint someone like me, they’re misguided,” she said.
Artemus Ward, the author of “Deciding to Leave: The Politics of Retirement From the United States Supreme Court,” said Justice Kennedy found himself at a crucial crossroads.
If he wants to resign under a Republican president in the first half of a presidential term, he must act.
“It’s now or never,” said Mr. Ward, a political scientist at Northern Illinois University.
“It’s either this year or you wait until the next election.”
Party loyalty is likely to overcome more subtle concerns about judicial legacy, Mr. Ward said.
Justice Kennedy holds the crucial vote in many closely divided cases, and he has drifted to the left. He has cast conservative votes in cases on campaign finance and gun rights but has lately voted with the court’s liberal wing on gay rights, abortion and affirmative action.
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The Supreme Court has several Justices who are candidates to be replaced because of age and health or perhaps being illegally appointed by Obama.
The next few months should be very interesting from both the political and financial aspects of future predictions and events. The entire U. S. Government is currently being exposed as to the extent of the corruption of the various office holders.
Certainly Ruth Ginsberg retiring is a real possibility given her recent actions and statements. This Justice is not only old but has demonstrated a deterioration in her mental capacity. A Supreme Court Justice should not be taking a public stance of Political Opinions – IMO.
There remains many questions surrounding Anthony Scalia’s death and the subsequent appointment of his replacement. Because the New Justice was not named by Obama the Supreme Courthas remained in a conservation pro-Law position.
Of course, the return of the Rule of Law is an important aspect of the Supreme Court. Trump appears to favor this aspect of the selection process. The Supreme Court is not the legislative Branch and should follow the U. S. Constitution as written.
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Your comments are as astute as ever David, Ginsburg will probably get run over by a bus drunk walking.
It’s well past time for her to go.
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