trade representative, argues in The Times. compete with China, Robert Lighthizer, who was Trump’s U.S. And here’s a look at Jill Biden’s Olympic fashion. The American Lydia Jacoby, 17, upset Lilly King in the 100-meter breaststroke. The weight lifter Hidilyn Diaz won the first Olympic gold for the Philippines. Updates from Tokyo: Naomi Osaka is out of the tennis tournament. Novels by Kazuo Ishiguro, Rachel Cusk and Richard Powers are among the 13 nominations for the Booker Prize. The death toll in the condo collapse in Surfside, Fla., reached a final figure of 98. Tunisia’s president suspended Parliament, a crisis that threatens the only democracy to emerge from the Arab Spring.Ĭhina is targeting the families of Uyghurs who have spoken about abuses.Ī Hong Kong court found a protester guilty of terrorism and inciting secession in the first trial under the Beijing-imposed security law. Here’s the latest on the extreme weather. In Europe, wildfires are ravaging Sardinia, and heavy rain battered England. India’s monsoon season, turbocharged by climate change, is shaping up to be especially destructive. Mehdi Hasan of MSNBC asked: “Where on Earth has he been over the past two decades as the Supreme Court delivered one partisan decision after another?” Others say Breyer is being naïve: “For him to continue to make the same gamble that Justice Ginsburg made and lost runs the risk of tainting his legacy as a justice and has the potential to be an anti-democratic disaster,” Paul Campos, a law professor, argued in The Times. Some have praised Breyer’s decision: “The louder the calls for retirement, the more he may resist,” The Wall Street Journal’s Kimberley Strassel wrote. Otherwise, they undermine public faith in the law, he said. Judges must be “loyal to the rule of law, not to the political party that helped to secure their appointment,” Breyer argued in a recent speech. But Democrats’ Senate control is so narrow that even a single senator’s death or absence could prevent them from confirming a replacement - given Republican obstruction. 15, Breyer is set to become the sixth.īreyer could retire next year, before the midterm elections. The only five justices to celebrate their 83rd birthdays on the bench in recent decades have been liberals. So has the pro-Republican bias of both the Electoral College and the Senate.īut it matters that liberal justices care less than their conservative colleagues about who replaces them. The refusal of Senate Republicans to let Obama replace Antonin Scalia, after Scalia died unexpectedly at 79, has played a big role, too. The different attitudes toward retirement are not the only reason that conservatives dominate the court today. The conservatives justices are more likely to act as if they are part of something larger. One possibility is that they have been influenced by the cohesive conservative legal movement of the past few decades, embodied by the Federalist Society. Their attitude has been based more on realpolitik and political principle. If Breyer is eventually replaced by a Republican president, the court would move even further to the right.Ĭonservative justices have focused less on their own personal preferences when timing their retirements. In the years ahead, Ginsburg’s decision may cost millions of American women access to abortion - as well as shape policy on voting rights, climate change, gun control, religion and other issues. Whatever the reasons, though, it has huge consequences for the country. It involves so few people that it may partly be a coincidence. There is no one explanation for the pattern. And Stephen Breyer, now 82, could have announced his retirement this summer, with Joe Biden in the White House and the Democrats narrowly controlling the Senate, but Breyer has not. Ruth Bader Ginsburg, having been diagnosed with cancer, could have retired at 81 during Barack Obama’s presidency but did not. John Paul Stevens could have retired at age 80 during Bill Clinton’s presidency but did not. Several liberal justices have taken a different approach. That’s part of the reason that Democratic presidents have so rarely had the chance to flip a court seat: The conservative justices try not to let it happen. To put the pattern in its starkest terms, no modern conservative justice has forfeited the chance to be replaced by a Republican president after turning 80. Sandra Day O’Connor left the court at 75, during George W. Warren Burger and Lewis Powell both retired at 79, during Ronald Reagan’s second term. For conservative Supreme Court justices, 80 is effectively retirement age.Īfter Anthony Kennedy turned 80, he stepped down at the first convenient moment - in 2018, when a Republican was in the White House and the court wasn’t already welcoming a first-year justice.
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