The Supreme Court was poised to have a democratic appointed majority for the first time since nineteen or so it seemed until Donald trumps stunning victory yesterday in the presidential election. Now the Republican will get to fill the pending Supreme Court vacancy, and with three justices seventy eight or older, he may get additional appointments that will shape the Court
for decades. What kind of justices will Trump appoint He has said they will be in the mole of antonin Scalia, the conservative icon who died in February, and Trump has promised his justices will protect gun rights and be willing to overturn the ree View Wade abortion rights ruling. This is what he said at the final presidential debate. The justices that I'm going to a point will be pro life. They will have a conservative bent. They will be protecting
the Second Amendment. They are great scholars in all cases, and they are people of tremendous respect. They will interpret the Constitution the way the founders wanted it interpreted. So what will this mean for the for the Constitution and American law. We'll talk with two people with very different perspectives on that. Elizabeth Widra as president of the liberal Constitutional Accountability Center. Kerrie Savarino is Chief council and Policy
director of the Conservative Judicial Crisis Network. Elizabeth, I'm gonna start with you. I know you are very disappointed with the election results. Uh, Now that depending vacancy is going to be filled by Donald Trump and not Barack Obama or Hillary Clinton, what do you anticipate will be the short term immediate impact on the court. Thank you so much,
Greig for having me on your show today. Yeah, you know, I mean, obviously, yesterday we were hoping and looking forward to a potential progressive majority on the Supreme Court that would restore the constitution and course correct for some of these aggressive conservative rulings that we've seen out of the
Roberts Court over the past decade or so. But I think it's important to remember that with this ninth justice, who will be UM confirmed to the core it if it's a nominee, and you know, Mark Gartland is still pending before the Senate. Um. The President Obama appointed, i mean nominated him in accordance with his constitutional duty to do so, and his nomination is still pending. UM. Although I don't think UM any of us who have listened to the Senate Republicans recently think that they are going
to be responsible and act on that. But regardless, if there is a ninth justice that is appointed by President elect Trump to the Supreme Court, we're back in the world that we were in before Justice Gale is passing, where we have a five to four conservative majority, but with justices like Anthony Kennedy and Chief Justice John Roberts who sometimes do side with the more liberal justices to reach progressive rulings. We in that context saw the marriage
equality ruling. We saw the ruling just last term that vindicated a woman's right to choose an abortion and strike down state laws that basically tried to make an end run around the const juician and put limits on the right to choose an abortion. So I think right now we need to remember that, Yes, for progressive like myself who might be disappointed that we are not looking forward to a progressive majority, we still are in the world
where it is possible to have progressive victories in the Court. Um. We also saw the affirmative Action ruling, with Justice Kennedy
siding with the more liberal justices last terms. So while I think we are rightly concerned that there could be setbacks in the march of progress we've seen recently toward rights and protections for LGBTQ Americans, progress toward greater racial equality and justice, progress toward including the rights of everyday Americans in the Supreme Court sturisprudence, and not just solicitous behavior toward corporate interests at the High Court. You know,
it is a disappointing day, but there is still hope. Well, carry during the campaign now, President elect Trump released a list of judges he said he would consider appointing, and it was widely seen at the time as a list that was meant to make conservatives comfortable with who he would appoint to the court. How confident should people be that he's going to actually use this list or pick somebody off this list when he had when he makes
an appointment. Well, I think it was a historic move actually for presidential nominee to put a Supreme Court list like that out, and I have confidence in it, largely because we see the impact it did have on the election. Many of the exit polls are showing that the Supreme Court was the top issue for over one fifth of the voters. That is huge, and I'm not sure we've ever seen that kind of influence that the Supreme Court
has had on a presidential election of the past. I think Trump will recognize that that this is really, in many ways what put him in office, and that people were very concerned about the kind of justice that Hillary Clinton would appoint, uh, particularly because it would give the Court a solid five vote lib role majority. Now Elizabeth is referred to I have to laugh that she would call the court currently an aggressively conservative court, because it's
clearly not. It's clearly a four or four one court. And um, we have four conservative votes, four liberal votes who are much more consistent in their um, you know, in their group identity as liberals than the conservatives are. And then Anthony Kennedy, who in recent terms has been shifting dramatically to the left. Last term, the highest agreement between Justice and the Court was between Kennedy and and Briar and Kage. Now this is someone who is clearly
not not a conservative justice. He is a swing vote who is tending ever more liberal. If UH Trump picked someone off of one of the piece candidates on his list of nominees, I suspect it will be someone who has a very similar judicial philosophy to Justice Scalia. So assuming they are equally conservative to Scalia, that leaves the court um where it what's the four four or for
one split. That's the same aggressively conservative court rights that gave you up held Obamacare, that you know that that had the abortion decision, that that nationalize same sex marriage and constitutionalize that issues. So I really don't think much will change in the short term, though, of course, there
probably will be additional Supreme Court nominations coming up. And we can't forget that about half of the seats on the Courts of Appeals as with an auguration day will be either vacant or we'll have judges that are eligible to take seeing your status, and so there's a huge opportunity um for Trump to appoint constitutionalist judges who will take the text and history of the Constitution seriously um
into their decisions as well. We'll talk a little more in a minute about the possibility of additional vacancies, Elizabeth. We have only have about a minute right now. But um, given what you're you're talking about, Marrior Garland, and I know you are disappointing with the way Senate Republicans handled that nomination. Uh, if if Donald Trump nominates somebody like like someone Carry was describing, how would you want Senate
Democrats to treat that nomination? You know, I think that the way that Senate Democrats have treated nominations in the past, which is to give a vigorous review to the record of the nominee. And I think, you know, we'll cross that bridge when we get to it. I don't know, honestly,
if Trump will choose someone from his list. I think it is one of the many unknowns of the potential of the upcoming Trump administration, whether he'll choose someone from that list or not, and what that nomination looks like. It's basically a very unknown world. And for an institution like the Supreme Court, which likes to think of itself
as very stable, it's rather concerning Carry. The three oldest justices Ginsburgh, Kennedy, and Briar, I think we all agree, are either on the left or in the center of the court. So if if Donald Trump gets to replace a couple of them in addition to filling the current vacancy, what what are we going to see? Are we going to see a court that overturns the Aberga Fell Game marriage ruling, overturns the Vieway dibortion rights ruling. And is that really what you think the American public what was
looking for with this with this election? Well, I think what they were looking for is certainly to prevent a dominant liberal majority from from running the table on a lot of issues that the Constitution doesn't speak to, whether it be same sex marriage, etcetera. Um, I don't know. Actually, it'll be interesting to see how if those justices are replaced,
how that will affect the court. Historically, Republicans have been much more, much less effective in in in having fully vetted nominees that really do have a consistent, uh conservative judicial philosophy on the court, so for many years, But that's not the lack of trying your part. Absolutely. I think that's why I was encouraged seeing Trump list, because that did seem to show people with more evidence that they actually had the judicial philosophy as they put into
practice and weren't just speaking to it. Because for so many years we had a Republican dominated the Preme Court Republican and point he dominated that was in fact, many of the Republican points were the most global members of the Court, you know, like like a Justice Suitor or Justice John Paul Stephens. So I think it'll be interesting
to see if that trend changes. I hope it does change, because, um, I don't think we that the American will want a court that will continue to put policy preferences before the constitutions. And I hope we'll just see the court, you know, call the decisions as they are and and stick with
what the constitution actually says Elizabeth. Earlier this year, liberals kind of breathed a sigh of relief when the Supreme Court deadlock four to four in a case called Friedrichs that was about whether public sector unions could get mandatory dues from public sector workers, and there was it seemed as though the Court was poised before Justice Scali had died,
to overturn that decision and weakend public sector unions. Can we expect something like that to come back to the court now, when there's going to be a conservative majority again. I would expect that the lawyers who are litigating the public sector union induced case from the corporate side are very eager to get the case back up before a conservative dominated Supreme Court and I think that's one of
the things that UM, I'm concerned about. We've seen the Roberts Court being the most pro corporate court in the modern era, and I think, if you know, one of the areas to watch is exactly the corporate space, because we have rulings UM that could come from the Court
that are harmful to employee safety. UM discrimination rules allowing employees to band together through class actions to hold corporations accountable for wrongdoing employees and consumers being able to do that, and that's one of the things that I think would be different UM if you have a ninth justice appointed by a Trump presidency, UM, and also if you have
more nominees coming down the pike. I will say that when carry talks about justices who will respect the text and history of the Constitution UM, and Donald Trump promising to do so, I certainly hope that he does, because when I look at the Constitution, I see a document that is inherently progressive, one that has been amended over our country's history to become more equal, more just, more inclusive by removing the stain of slavery and including people
who were excluded from our founding promise, like women people of color as the poor. And so I think that the American people, when they look at the results of this election on the Supreme Court, should hold the justices and a President Trump to that constitutional text in history. Carry We only have about thirty seconds, but I'll give you the last work is I'm sure you want to
respond to what Elizabeth just said. Sure, I absolutely agree the whole Constitution, all its amendments are what the court should be looking at um. But but we can't read into those amendments just where we wish the Constitution the country would be. If the nation wants to amend the Constitution again, absolutely in should douced to. But there's a process for that, and that's Article five. By passing an amendment, we don't shouldn't have unelected judges doing that by simply
reading in their favorite policy preferences. So hopefully we'll have judges who can put their politics aside, so whatever their personal politics are, they can fix with the constitution. Says thank you so much to our guest Carrie Savarino the Judicial Crisis Network Elizabeth Wadra of the Constitutional Accountability Center. This debate will surely continue