The Supreme Court didn't have to be conservative the last fifty years
The death of Ruth Bader Ginsburg has left most Democrats despondent for our future. She will likely be remembered longer than most her colleagues (and far longer than Republican Senators rushing to replace her) for her never ending fight for rights of all Americans. Fear is widespread of a deeply conservative court addressing voting rights, reproductive rights, and other social and economic issues in coming decades. Republican nominees have been reliably conservative since the Reagan administration (yes, O’Connor and Kennedy were sometimes “swing” votes, but they were overwhelmingly conservative). Since 1986 all Republican nominees have been Roman Catholic with the exception of David Souter. Whether the nominations were to court the Catholic vote or to appear to choose an anti-abortion jurist is an interesting question. If they were meant to appease anti-abortion activists, such efforts were rather superficial at best, as most jurists consider adhering to precedent a near-sa