The 2016 presidential election is now a referendum on the Supreme Court

[applegrove]

The 2016 presidential election is now a referendum on the Supreme Court
by Dylan Matthews at Vox

http://www.vox.com/2016/2/13/10987210/antonin-scalia-death-2016-election

"SNIP..........

But the stakes of this election for the court are clear, and enormous. A Supreme Court with six solid liberals — Democrats' best-case scenario — could overturn Citizens United, overrule Heller (which established for the first time that the Second Amendment gives individuals a right to bear arms), and enable school desegregation plans the Roberts Court struck down. It could conceivably, depending on its exact composition, abolish the death penalty for good, maybe even solitary confinement too.

And a Supreme Court with seven solid conservatives — Republicans' best-case scenario — could overturn Roe v. Wade, strike down even more campaign finance regulation, and narrow or abolish Miranda rights (as Scalia and Thomas once tried to do). If justices with a libertarian bent get appointed, you could even see a partial return of the Lochner era, with minimum wage statutes and worker protections getting struck down as violating "liberty of contract." That Supreme Court would almost certainly have invalidated Obamacare.

These are very very high stakes indeed. And they matter not just for the presidential election, but for highly contested Senate elections in states like Wisconsin, Illinois, New Hampshire, Ohio, and Florida. A vote for Republican incumbent Kelly Ayotte in New Hampshire becomes a vote for the conservative vision of the court. A vote for her Democratic rival Gov. Maggie Hassan becomes a vote for the liberal vision.

Reasonable people can disagree about the proprietary of Senate Republicans punting the Scalia vacancy to the next president. But the fact that they've done so makes this election a referendum on the Supreme Court. Do you want a Court that allows governments to crack down on money in politics and guns and that limits the power of police and prosecutors? Or do you want a court that empowers law enforcement, paves the way for states to ban abortion outright, and limits the federal government's Commerce Clause powers to regulate the economy?



...........SNIP"