Quote:
Originally Posted by SteveZ
The Supreme Court is not as fluid an operation as many would be led to believe. It really deals in only one subject - Constitutional Law. Everything else just flows as subsets of it. While the jurists who staff it may have personal leanings, they have demonstrated a propensity to view the law independent of their personalities. That's what makes them good jurists and why no matter who replaces whom, SCOTUS will still be SCOTUS.
Laws passed are meaningless unless four things happen: 1) Congress gives the Executive Branch the funding to enforce them; 2) the Executive Branch actually enforces them; 3) If Constitutionality is challenged, the Supreme Court rules for-or-against; and 4) Congress fulfills is oversight responsibilities with vigor.
Congress - at least the greatest majority of seat-holders - have proven themselves to be lumps of inorganic material when it comes to accomplishing anything. A 10% approval rate for a group of people with an average incumbency of over 16 years! With records like that, the lot of them would have been fired from any business a long time before accruing that sort of longevity. Yet, they keep on a'chugging along....
A new President is not going to make the next Congress "better perform" than its current dismal rating. The Congress[wo]men are still basically the same human beings who flunked out this past term. If after 10-20-30 years they can't work together any better, having a new guy in the "other branch" of government won't affect Congress. It is still its own animal, and diseased with too-long-a-tenure.
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I doubt if the Republican loaded US Supreme Court with Barack Obama as President and a Democrat majority in the House and Senate will on one hand push forth any kind of anti-abortion agenda which could have been a different story with McCain/Palin in the White House. On the other hand, doubt if this Supreme Court will even touch on the matter of the the right of gays and lesbians to marry under State and US Constitutions. It would seem that the US Constitution and how SCOTUS justices interpret it would be the final arbiter on whether or not gays and lesbians can marry in states like FL, CA and MA.
"Seven of the current justices of the court were appointed by Republican presidents, while two were appointed by a Democratic president. It is popularly accepted that Chief Justice Roberts and Justices Scalia, Thomas, and Alito compose the Court's conservative wing. Justices Stevens, Souter, Ginsburg and Breyer are generally thought of as the Court's liberal wing.[13] Justice Kennedy, generally[citation needed] thought of as a conservative who "occasionally vote[s] with the liberals", is considered most likely to be the swing vote that determines the outcome of certain close cases.[14]"
From Wikipedia article on the United States Supreme Court.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Supreme..._United_States