The Republican Candidate for the 2024 U.S elections, Donald Trump, had appointed a panel of judges that issued a ruling on October 25 which an election law expert had called “bonkers.”
According to the appellate judges, a Mississippi law counting ballots postmarked by Election Day but arriving afterward infringed on the federal law.
While the 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals panel had not put the ruling into immediate effect for this election; it sent the case back to a lower court for further proceedings.
One thing is clear though, whatever the outcome of this decision, it holds a lesson for voters casting their votes on Election Day and that is that: The courts are on the ballot.
During his tenure as the U.S president, Trump appointed over 200 federal judges, including half the high court’s six-justice Republican-appointed majority: Neil Gorsuch, Brett Kavanaugh and Amy Coney Barrett.
Among the other judges, he had also appointed the ones who issued that Mississippi ruling and they are: Andrew Oldham, James Ho and Kyle Duncan.
These legal practitioners have all been suggested as possible Supreme Court picks for the Republican nominee if he wins.
The two oldest justices are Clarence Thomas, aged 76, and Samuel Alito, aged 74. Chief Justice John Roberts is 69 yrs old, while Democratic appointees Sonia Sotomayor and Elena Kagan are aged 70 and 64, respectively. All three Trump justices as well as President Joe Biden’s lone pick, Ketanji Brown Jackson, are in their 50s.
From this, you can understand that the Senate is also important.
Meanwhile Democrats hold precarious control by a 51-49 margin so even if Kamala Harris keeps the White House in Democratic control by winning the elections, we don’t have to imagine how a Republican-controlled Senate would act during her administration.
Its not that hard especially when you look at what happened when former President Barack Obama nominated the mild-mannered Merrick Garland to fill the late Antonin Scalia’s seat.
Republicans wouldn’t even give Garland the light of day a.k.a a hearing. That now left Scalia’s seat open for Republicans to install Gorsuch, who, together with Kavanaugh, Barrett, Thomas and Alito, was in the five-justice majority that went on to overturn the controversial Roe v. Wade.
How such issues are decided at the high court in the future could effectively be decided today as the election progresses.
