Dahlia Lithwick has a new article up at Slate, Supremely Scary:
The Sudden Outbreak of Supreme Court Horror Stories, much of which pokes fun at op-ed writers who argue that the outcome of the Presidential election will have a profound impact on the future of the Supreme Court. Lithwick makes the point that while Bush and Kerry would try to appoint very different Justices, there are important reasons not to overstate the influence of the election on the Court. She notes that no one knows how many seats will open up; that confirmation battles would impose serious constraints on any president’s choices; and that Justices, once confirmed, can be unpredictable.
All three are strong points, and I’m glad she made them. If you’ll allow me a slightly snarky aside, however, I’m not entirely sure how to reconcile that with what Lithwick herself wrote for the New York Times on August 29th:
. . . [Y]ou’ll be picking the next Supreme Court with your vote come November. We forget that appointing judges may be the single most important thing a president does. . . .
Trust me, beneath [the Supreme Court Justices’] sunblock, and their duck hats, sit the nine most powerful, secretive public officials in this land. And whether you can name them or not is immaterial. Because after November, that president whose soul you’ve come to know so well is going to start naming a whole lot of their successors.
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