In an op-ed today in the Boston Globe, former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton takes on what may be the biggest issue at stake in the 2016 election: the future of the US Supreme Court.
The court’s decisions have a profound impact on American families. In the past two decades alone, it effectively declared George W. Bush president, significantly weakened the Voting Rights Act, and opened the door to a flood of unaccountable money in our politics. It also made same-sex marriage legal nationwide, preserved the Affordable Care Act not once but twice, and ensured equal access to education for women.
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On Election Day, three of the current justices will be over 80 years old, which is past the court’s average retirement age. The next president could easily appoint more than one justice. That makes this a make-or-break moment — for the court and our country.
That’s true. As People For the American Way recently laid out in our Judgment Day report, virtually every single important issue—from voting rights to guns to reproductive freedom to workplace fairness to the environment and beyond—will be at stake before the Supreme Court. And because the Justices most likely to retire in the next few years come from both sides of the bench, our country has the opportunity to pull the Court from its dangerous rightward lurch of the last decade—or to solidify a far-right majority for a generation.
But just as important as preventing the next president from appointing more Justices in the mold of Scalia, Thomas and Alito, we need to elect a President who will appoint extraordinary jurists who understand the profoundly progressive nature of our constitution. In her op-ed, Senator Clinton lays out what that looks like.
As president (and a lawyer and former law professor), I’ll appoint justices who will protect the constitutional principles of liberty and equality for all, regardless of race, gender, sexual orientation or political viewpoint; make sure the scales of justice aren’t tipped away from individuals toward corporations and special interests; and protect citizens’ right to vote, rather than billionaires’ right to buy elections.
Secretary Clinton isn’t alone in laying out a progressive vision for the Court. Senator Bernie Sanders has spoken repeatedly about the Supreme Court’s decision in Citizens United and how we need to "overturn this disastrous decision.” And Governor Martin O’Malley has promised to “appoint judges who don't think corporations are people.”
All of this is good news for progressives—and why People For the American Way has been pushing so hard for more conversation about the importance of the Supreme Court as we head into the 2016 election. But it’s not enough.
In the coming weeks and months we’ll continue to push candidates of both parties to make clear what kind of judges they’d appoint to our nation’s highest courts, because, as Secretary Clinton says, “There’s a lot at stake in this election. Nowhere is this clearer than in the US Supreme Court.”