The U.S. Supreme Court may not make a ruling on high-profile issues like abortion or affirmative action in its upcoming term, as Chief Justice John Roberts hopes to depoliticize the court after the controversy surrounding nominee Brett Kavanaugh, The Hill reports.
Kavanaugh's confirmation proceedings have become a "highly partisan show," according to Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg, who noted in a speech at George Washington University last week that she and other Supreme Court justices were confirmed by wide margins in the 1980’s and 1990’s.
“The way it was was right,” she said. “The way it is is wrong.”
Nicole Saharsky, a partner at the law firm Gibson Dunn, said during a panel at Georgetown Law: “Depending on what happens with the rest of confirmation process, the court might feel kind of battered and like it needs to take things more slowly."
Irv Gornstein, who heads the school's Supreme Court Institute, said that Roberts wants to preserve the court’s impartial and nonpartisan image, and the idea that its rulings are based on the law, not politics.
“I think he would be concerned that a series of 5-4 rulings, in which the five are Republican-appointed justices and the four are Democrat-appointed justices, would threaten to destroy that perception of the court,” Gornstein told the Hill.
“I don’t think the Chief Justice wants to be remembered as the Chief Justice who presided over the court at the time that the public lost faith in the court, and began to regard it as just another partisan institution,” he said.
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