The Supreme Court Is the Most Important Issue in the 2016 Election

 Healthcare, gay marriage, voting rights, affirmative action, reproductive rights, labor rights, immigration, climate change.

These are some of the crucial issues that have come before the Supreme Court in recent years or will be heard this year. A cliché we hear every presidential cycle is that the Court should be one of the most important issues in the election, but this year, following the death of Antonin Scalia, it’s never been truer. The next president will almost certainly appoint one or more justices, especially if Republicans zealously oppose whomever President Obama nominates, who will shape the direction of the Court for decades. A Democratic successor to Obama would be able to achieve the first liberal Court since the Warren Court of the 1960s.

Conservatives have long understood the power of the courts and made wielding it a key priority. Opponents of the Voting Rights Act, for example, tried for decades to weaken the law by pushing Congress not to reauthorize the act and for conservative presidents to gut it. When that strategy failed, they turned to the courts. Presidents like Richard Nixon, Ronald Reagan, and George W. Bush ushered in a sweeping counter-revolution in the law by appointing justices such as Scalia, William Rehnquist, Clarence Thomas, John Roberts, and Samuel Alito.

https://www.thenation.com/article/the-supreme-court-is-the-most-important-issue-in-the-2016-election/