http://www.nytimes.com/2016/10/03/opinion/a-crippled-supreme-courts-new-term.html 2016-10-03 09:36:44 A Crippled Supreme Court’s New Term Seven months after President Obama nominated Merrick Garland, the court remains short-handed and unable to decide the nation’s most pressing issues. === This is American politics in 2016: the normalization of the deeply abnormal, the collapse of customs of behavior and respect, and the creation of an environment so toxic and polarized that the nation’s leaders struggle to carry out the most basic tasks of government. In this chaotic climate, it can be easy to forget that the Supreme Court, which begins a new term on Monday, remains without a ninth justice nearly seven months after President Obama This is entirely contrary to the workings of a constitutional government, and it is inflicting damage on the court and the country. But the Senate Republicans care nothing about that as they continue their unprecedented stonewalling of Judge Garland’s nomination in the hopes of preserving the court’s conservative majority. Meanwhile, the eight justices have split evenly in several major cases, which puts off any final judgment on lawsuits that affect millions of Americans. These include challenges to The inability to issue precedent-setting rulings appears to have led the justices to grant review on Meanwhile, some of the nation’s most pressing legal issues are awaiting substantive rulings by the court. Most urgent among these are lawsuits against the efforts of Republican legislatures to suppress voting by minorities, young people and others who tend to vote Democratic. For example, in July a federal appeals court panel North Carolina appealed that ruling to the Supreme Court, which Other high-profile cases that demand attention from a full court include a challenge to a Virginia school’s refusal to allow a transgender boy to use the boys’ bathroom (the court in August The court, particularly after it decided the outcome of the 2000 presidential election Conservative apologists pretend this is all just standard political gamesmanship, but nothing like it has ever happened before. Even when Democrats strongly opposed Republican nominees, like Robert Bork or Clarence Thomas, they still respected the president’s right to make a nomination, and they held hearings and had a full vote. In contrast, the Republicans have shut down the process entirely out of fear that the near half-century of conservative control of the court could come to an end.