![]() ![]() It has had no small role in their elevation, aggressively recruiting and promoting candidates for the bench and supporting conservative Republican candidates for president. Succeeding perhaps beyond its dreams, it now counts the six conservative members of the Supreme Court among its current or former members. Since then, the Society has grown and prospered in numbers, influence and fundraising prowess. Many of the rulings of the Supreme Court under Chief Warren Burger and his predecessor Earl Warren were regarded as egregious examples of "activist judges" run amok. ![]() Their animating idea was that federal judges were arrogating too much power to themselves and playing fast and loose with the Constitution to accommodate their own policy preferences. Rising up in the wake of Roe, the group was formally founded in 1982. Campus organization seizes power: The Federalist Societyīack in 1991, Thomas was the first new justice on the court who had been associated with the Federalist Society, a campus gathering of conservative law students and faculty at Yale, the University of Chicago and other schools. Thomas' nomination was confirmed by the full Senate 52 to 48, saved by the votes of 11 Democrats unwilling to oppose him. Thomas - who is Black and was nominated to fill the vacancy left by Thurgood Marshall, the only African American ever to serve on the court at the time - called Hill's televised testimony "a high-tech lynching for uppity Blacks who in any way deign to think for themselves." Thomas faced accusations of sexual harassment by a former co-worker named Anita Hill. His hearing was not without controversy, however. ![]() Thomas had an ideological profile much akin to Bork's, but he was confirmed in part because he declined to state opinions about controversial issues. Moreover, individual justices at times seemed to evolve in their views and alliances during their time on the court, sometimes frustrating the president who appointed them or elements of his party. Reagan appointee Antonin Scalia, a true conservative icon, was confirmed in 1986 without a dissenting vote. If there was not an egregious issue or personal matter, the vote was often lopsided. In the past, as a rule, the Senate defaulted to confirming nominees in deference to the president - even across party lines. It is a tradition the current chief justice often salutes and, at least at times, seems eager to serve. ![]() But it has also had a tradition of idealizing a nonpartisan consensus and seeking unanimity whenever possible. Throughout its history the Supreme Court has made momentous political decisions, driven at times by strong ideological leanings. Republican presidents have had 15 of them, Democratic presidents just five. Overall, in the 54 years since Nixon first took office, there have been 20 confirmed appointments to the court, counting chiefs and associate justices. By contrast, four of the six Republican presidents in that same period - Dwight Eisenhower, Richard Nixon, Ronald Reagan and George W. While the presidency itself has swung between the two parties with some regularity since World War II, with Republicans holding the office for 40 years and Democrats for 38, no Democratic president in all those decades has been able to appoint and confirm a chief justice. Republicans have also had far more luck in having Supreme Court vacancies occur when they controlled the White House and a working majority in the Senate. (Bush did win the popular vote in his reelection year, before he appointed any justices.) Bush also came to the presidency initially via the Electoral College after losing the popular vote to Al Gore in 2000. The biggest contributor on this score was Trump's 2016 win in the Electoral College against Hillary Clinton. Law Supreme Court kills Biden's student debt plan in a setback for millions of borrowers ![]()
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