A Supreme Court Vacancy: What’s at Stake, What’s Required
Todd Gaziano /
The news that Justice David Souter will be resigning from the Supreme Court has left some conservatives momentarily confused. It should not. As much as Justice Souter disappointed those faithful to the Constitution, and those disappointments are legion, he was reasonable or even sound in several key areas (more will be forthcoming from my colleagues on that). Any Supreme Court appointment is momentous, but what is at stake now is a potential shift from a center-left justice to a far-left justice.
This is what all Americans have a right to expect of a qualified judicial nominee, especially for the High Court:
- A Constitutionalist: Someone with proven fidelity to uphold the original meaning of the Constitution and laws as written.
- An Umpire: Someone who adheres to Chief Justice John Roberts’s analogy of a baseball umpire. E.g., someone who doesn’t bend the rules for the game, but just calls them as he sees them; someone who offers no favoritism depending on who is at bat.
- An Originalist: Someone who takes the original, public meaning of the text (Constitution and laws) seriously and does not look for excuses to depart from it and read into it what he or she wants.