As you probably know by now, President Trump announced his pick for the Supreme Court Justice last Tuesday as Brett Kavanaugh. The real question though is why you should care. I'm going to be honest, when Neil Gorsuch was instated back in 2017, I absolutely did not care and really didn't even know about it. However, here's why you 100 percent should care!
The Supreme Court makes important decisions for US Legislation. Currently, there are only nine Supreme Court justices, bestowing great amounts of power in these nine peoples' hands. The Supreme Court's huge amount of power really started in 1803 in the Marbury v. Madison trial that ultimately decided that the Supreme Court had the power of judicial review over Congress. This sounds fancy, yet it really means that the justices get to decide whether a law made by Congress is "Constitutional" meaning it doesn't go against any of the rights or ideals outlined in the Constitution. Now, this doesn't mean that every law passed goes through the Supreme Court for approval but any legislation brought before the justices go through this test. This has allowed the Supreme Court to make some very important decisions on the laws of our country since then.
This power of judicial review has been used for prejudice and unfair laws many times in the past, such as Plessy v. Ferguson which allowed segregation to continue on the state level. However, decisions made by the Supreme Court have also been used to create change like Brown v Board of Education, that decided that separation of students based on race was unconstitutional. These two decisions were made sixty years apart and were completely opposite from each other. This is due in large part because the Supreme Court had completely new justices when the Brown v Board of Education decision was made which goes to show exactly how much power these individuals have when they can completely overrule a decision made just sixty years earlier.
In more recent years, some highly publicized decisions made have included Roe v Wade which gave women the right to an abortion in the first two trimesters as well as Obergefell v Hodges which legalized gay marriage. No matter how you feel about these decisions, you have to admit that they were very important decisions for both sides of the aisle. It's also interesting to note that Obergefell v Hodges was decided by a 5-4 vote meaning every single judge really had a very huge part in the decision making. This all just goes to show how much even a single judge change can drastically change the future of the country for years to come especially since these judges hold their positions for life.
Anthony Kennedy, the justice that is retiring and creating this chance for President Trump to elect a new justice, is generally considered a fairly liberal judge along with Ruth Bader Ginsburg, Stephen Breyer, Sonia Sotomayor, and Elena Kagan. This means that right now, with Anthony Kennedy still serving, the judges who are viewed as more liberal outnumber the more conservative judges by just one. Because of this close divide, this one change in judges could potentially create a huge difference in Supreme Court decisions for years to come. No matter what side of the aisle you're on, or neither for my libertarian friends out there, this is an incredibly important decision that will be affecting our nation for a long time.
