Why should they get the court too?

Yesterday Neil M. Gorsuch was sworn in to the Supreme Court of the United States. He will serve a lifetime appointment from now until most likely at least 2048, the year he turns 80, very possibly beyond. There are two current members of the court who are older than that.

Today more than most I feel it is important to ask, why should they get the court too?

The Republicans have the House of Representatives. A prize won through the collection of state legislators to properly sequester or dilute Democratic votes in as many states as possible during redistricting. Allowing them to hold a strong and defensible majority, if not one that is entirely impenetrable to ideological disagreements, within the lower house.

Add to that the simple fact that Democratic states are more populous, while Republican states are more numerous. This means that on average, more states will send Republican Senators to Congress as their allocation is a constant two per state no matter how sparse.

This advantage in number of states has played out at the presidential level as well. Democrats have won 6 of the last 7 popular votes for president (‘92, ’96, ’00, ’08, ’12, ’16). However they have only won 4 of the last 7 Electoral College votes. To be clear, those have produced legitimate presidents as those are our rules. They could not be considered truly democratically elected though.

The Democrats are not particularly good at actually winning elections. 2016 should have been a clear indication of that. Even while indicators were pointing to a large Democratic victory, the party failed to deliver. That is made even worse by the notion that democratic ideas and policies often poll much higher than Republican ones. They are just not sold as well when the time comes. Gay Marriage, the Public Option, Marijuana legalization, supporting education, climate change, all public polls show the country siding with the Democratic platform, yet we have a Republican House, Republican Senate, Republican President.

So why should they get the court too?

Shouldn’t one branch of government actually reflect the people? Shouldn’t the minority be protected? Or majority represented? It doesn’t follow that this country should be governed by regressives trying to hold the country back from the direction which it is naturally heading.

Judge Gorsuch is not the coming of the apocalypse, he is a conservative, and some might say that it is a “conservative seat” which he sits on. That logic should not follow, just because the predecessor was a conservative, or an originalist, does not mean that the successor needs to be. If you’d like to find out if the gender of the judges should remain the same, I believe Ruth Bader Ginsburg enjoys answering that question.  The court must be allowed to evolve. It should reflect the practice of law for its own time, but it should also reflect the country for which it is interpreting those laws.

Just because Justice Scalia may have liked the person who replaced him, does not mean that we owe it to him to have Judge Gorsuch on the court. The country deserves to have a Justice that will dispense justice in a way that it recognizes.