Justice Anthony Kennedy announces his retirement from the Supreme Court

  After weeks of speculation the rumors have been confirmed; Supreme Court Justice Anthony Kennedy is going to retire at the end of July. While Justice Kennedy is considered a “conservative” voice on the bench he has been a swing vote on several issues, siding with the liberal justices on occasion.

  This is going to set up an interesting battle with the Republicans holding a slim margin of 51-49 in the Senate. We already know all the Democratic Senators are going to oppose the nominee no matter who it is, which means the Republicans can only lose one vote and somehow it looks like the wildcard could be none other than John McCain once again.

  The new nominee, whomever he or she is, is likely to make the Supreme Court more reliably conservative and of course the Democrats are going to fight this tooth and nail. In addition to the politics of personal destruction I expect the Democrats to fall back to the Merrick Garland/ Neil Gorsuch situation and call for no nomination to be made during an election year. 

  Update: Well, that did not take long. Chuck Schumer and Dianne Feinstein are already calling for a delay in the vote until after the election.

malo periculosam libertatem quam quietum servitium