In the 1946 film “It’s a Wonderful Life” Clarence the angel shows George Bailey how much of a difference George made in people’s lives by showing him a world without a George Bailey in it.
I think we should look at a theoretical Scalia-free world. The work to do this is too much for any one person, so I invite you to pick an event.
Here are the rules: Any 5-4 SCOTUS ruling with Scalia being one of the 5, now becomes a 4-4 ruling. This means that the lower court ruling is the law of the land, but no long lasting precedent is made (as I understand it). In some cases the SCOTUS upheld the lower court rulings, in some they were overturned. Without Scalia, the overturned cases weren’t.
(The 6-3 rulings would have been 5-3 and the 5-4 the other way would have been 5-3 — no change.)
I understand that there is a ripple effect — each changed ruling causes changes that may make future rulings different. So each case must be a snapshot in time.
But with 30 years on the court, there must be gobs of 5-4 rulings. Much more than I can look up. Bush v Gore and some of the obvious ones have probably been done to death by now, but what of the old & obscure ones? How would a Scalia-free world have been different?
(Yes, I realize that the SCOTUS would not have been left 4-4 for 30 years. That is not the point here. I’m looking for how Scalia himself changed the country.)