Obama’s Pick Would Help the Court. (Liberal Causes, Not So Much.) – Bloomberg View
If conservatives have nothing to fear from Garland, then liberals should beware: If he is confirmed, the court’s new liberal majority is not going to start marching off in their preferred directions. Garland himself is an incrementalist who respects democratic self-government; he is cautious about the uses of judicial authority. And outside the context of same-sex marriage, the current liberals have not shown much enthusiasm for recognizing brand-new rights, or for using the Constitution as an engine for social reform.
Replacing Scalia with Garland would nonetheless be important. Here’s why.
To the enthusiastic cheers of many people on the right, the court’s conservatives (including Scalia) have shown an occasional inclination to make significant breaks with existing law; most famously by giving broad protection to corporate campaign contributions in the Citizens United case, but also by limiting people’s right to sue government, by giving broad protection to commercial advertising, and by striking down any and all affirmative action programs.
With Garland on the court, you wouldn’t see much left-wing activism — but you would see a lot less right-wing activism, too. Over the last decade, much of the energy for dramatic shifts in the law has come from Scalia and Clarence Thomas, occasionally joined by John Roberts, Samuel Alito and Anthony Kennedy. If Garland is confirmed, those shifts will be far less likely.
From: Obama’s Pick Would Help the Court. (Liberal Causes, Not So Much.) – Bloomberg View
Well, that doesn’t sound so bad…Report
I’ve said it before, it simply shifts the center of the court one seat to the left. It doesn’t matter if Garland is out past RBG or just to the left of Kennedy, it still moves it left.
I’ve been reading some analysis of him that indicates he’s probably closer to RBG than he is Kennedy though, on most issues.
Some of the tea leaf reading is pretty strained I admit — decisions you hand down bound by precedent are different than when you’re sitting in SCOTUS and can set it — or change it.
(Although part of me thinks he shot to the top of the list merely so Obama could watch Orrin Hatch spend the next three months getting fed his own words).Report
I don’t follow the logic of your point, though. If he is more liberal than Kagan/Breyer/whoever you think the fourth most liberal sitting justice is, that’s true. But if he’s not, then he becomes the new swing vote, and the nuances of his views matter a great deal. From what little I’ve read about him, it’s not clear whether he is more or less liberal than the least liberal of the current 4-vote liberal bloc.Report
It matters whether he’s more or less liberal than Breyer or Kagan, but if he’s more liberal, it’s doesn’t really matter whether he’s a lot more liberal.Report
For many it will matter how he’s more liberal and how he’s less liberal even if he’s as liberal as Kagan in the aggregate.Report
Meh, he will fit in the authoritarian left just fine. He owes the Clintons a solid for the ’95 nomination and will become a upstanding liberal rubber stamper.Report
Just like O’Conner and Kennedy are reliable Conservative Rubber Stampers because they owed Reagan, of course.Report
That’s true, but I get the impression that he’s further left than the new center. So he won’t be the new swing in general. He appears to be further ‘left’ in general than Kagan and Breyer.
(Individual justices might end up the swing vote on some individual topics, because even a highly polarized court will occasionally break down in odd ways. Like abortion seems to swing on Kennedy, but commerce clause stuff seems to swing on Roberts. I’m just speaking in generalities).Report
If he wouldn’t have been the fifth vote to gut the 15th Amendment or go fifty miles out of the way to overturn decades of campaign finance law, he would have been a yuge difference from Scalia.Report