http://www.nytimes.com/2016/09/30/opinion/campaign-stops/a-liberal-supreme-court.html 2016-09-30 14:50:03 A Liberal Supreme Court Any American under the age of 50 has no memory of living with a liberal Supreme Court. That could change soon. === This article is part of the Opinion Today newsletter. You can Any American under the age of 50 has no memory of living with a liberal Supreme Court. That could change soon. Were a Democratic appointee to fill the current opening, laws could change on voting rights, corporate power, campaign finance, criminal justice and many other issues. “For the first time in decades,” Jeffrey Toobin Toobin’s article got me thinking about how quickly the Supreme Court is likely to dominate the political scene if Hillary Clinton wins. The immediate issue will be whether Senate Republicans fold – or maintain their unprecedented refusal to consider any nominee from President Obama in his last year in office. They have Obama nominated a compromise candidate, in Merrick Garland, a highly regarded moderate who will soon turn 64, considerably older than other recent nominees. Garland’s nomination expires at year’s end. If the vacancy falls to Clinton to fill, she will face a decision. She could re-nominate him in the hope that this time he really would be easily confirmed. Or she could be more ambitious and choose a younger nominee, such as Sri Srinivasan, a 49-year-old federal judge whom Republicans have supported in the past. All things equal, Srinivasan would be likely to serve almost twice as long as Garland. Clinton will be in a stronger position if the Democrats retake the Senate – strong enough that choosing Garland again would strike me as a mistake. I’ll delve into the details of a Senate vote in a future newsletter. For now, suffice it to say that anyone who cares about politics and policy should be watching the Senate races as well as the presidential campaign.