Supreme Court Litmus Testing in the 2016 Election by Linda Greenhouse
Hillary Clinton has been telling people — a group of financial backers in Brooklyn, a house party in Iowa — that as president, she would appoint Supreme Court justices who would overturn the Citizens United decision erasing limits on political spending by corporations.
“I will do everything I can to appoint Supreme Court justices who protect the right to vote and do not protect the right of billionaires to buy elections” is the way she puts it.
The pledge has evoked jeers from the right (Hypocrisy! What about the stratospheric projections for her own campaign spending, let alone her super PAC?) and a distinct absence of cheers from the left (litmus tests “take us down a very dangerous path,” Nan Aron, president of Alliance for Justice, a liberal umbrella group long active in judicial confirmations, told Tony Mauro of The National Law Journal. “They will only prompt another litmus test on an issue like Roe v. Wade.”)
Republican presidential nominees have in fact for the past quarter-century run on a party platform that pledges them to appoint anti-Roe justices. The 2012 Republican platform declared: “We support the appointment of judges who respect traditional family values and the sanctity of innocent human life.” (That platform also has a section entitled “Defending Marriage Against an Activist Judiciary.” Given the recent polls that show escalating public support for same-sex marriage, it will be interesting to see what version of that language makes it into next year’s platform.)
It’s hardly a favor to a Supreme Court nominee for a president even to suggest a desired quality beyond intellectual brilliance and fidelity to “the law.”
http://www.nytimes.com/2015/05/28/opinion/supreme-court-litmus-testing-in-the-2016-election.html?