This whole diary is all way out there, big big "what if", etc. Recently, perusing redstate as I often do to see what's up in the nutcasesphere, I came across an interesting diary about the next president's opportunities on the Supreme Court. It gave me an idea...
2008 and possible US Supreme Court Appointments
To follow up on Mark I and his redhot post "Packing the Court", which was a discussion on the post by Matthew Franck of National Review's Bench Memo's blog, the US Supreme Court should be a large focus on the 2008 Presidential race. Matthew makes the note that by 2016, only 3 current justices will be under 80 years of age. Those justice's are Thomas, Roberts, and Alito. Looking back on the past 40 years of US Supreme Court appointments, the number of US Supreme Court vacancies actually come in waves.
The diary goes on to detail the conservatism of the "batches" of judicial appointments that came up. It makes the pretty convincing case that, not only will John Paul Stevens be out of the running soon enough, it'll be VERY LIKELY that a few other justices will be going with him by 2016. And while nearly all of these justices are liberals (Scalia is the odd ball), we still have a tremendous opportunity to get some real feisty justices in there.
Now, I'm no expert on SCOTUS, but I know that our nation's highest court as of late has been terrible. There are corporatist, anti-choice, and sexist/racist decisions that are beginning to gut landmark decisions from Brown v. Board of Education to Roe v. Wade. We can stop these, and soon too.
But, between not only replenishing our stock on the court (sorry to speak in such stark ideological terms about this independent branch), isn't there even MORE gutsy rulings that are just waiting to happen? Isn't there more we can do on the civil liberties and environmental front, especially after 8 years of Bushco? I hope this is what we will be looking at, in a possible Obama or Edwards or whoever presidency. (Though I must add, that Richardson faux pas on his ideal Supreme Court justice sticks with me like no other. I'm not really dreaming about possibilities with him at this point...)
I'll close with one final question to the more informed out there: just as gay marriage was judicially legalized in certain states like Massachusetts, couldn't it also be done on the national scale? Think of how that would change the dynamics of the debate. I've thought a good bit about this, but we can speculate after somebody gives me a hint that it's even possible legally. Let's just say, though, that Elizabeth Edwards being pro-gay marriage is looking a whole lot more important right about now.