We do need to stop appointing according to how the individual has tended to vote on cases before getting the appointment but who gives in first, consevatives or liberals.

I hear a funny from Bill O'Reilly today when he said someone was as left leaning as Ruth Bader Ginsberg. LOL

"We aren't supposed to be looking for judges who are liberals or conservatives. We are supposed to be looking for judges who will apply the law as written. In fact, if we get Supreme Court justices who do anything other than that, who put their own ideology into their rulings, we have big problems, because that subverts our democratic process."

So who is subverting the democratic process the most? Let's look:

Writing in the New York Times in an Op-Ed, Paul Gewirtz a professor at Yale Law School and Chad Golder, who graduated from Yale Law School, said:

"Declaring an act of Congress unconstitutional is the boldest thing a judge can do. That's because Congress, as an elected legislative body representing the entire nation, makes decisions that can be presumed to possess a high degree of democratic legitimacy. In an 1867 decision, the Supreme Court itself described striking down Congressional legislation as an act "of great delicacy, and only to be performed where the repugnancy is clear." Until 1991, the court struck down an average of about one Congressional statute every two years. Between 1791 and 1858, only two such invalidations occurred.

Of course, calling Congressional legislation into question is not necessarily a bad thing. If a law is unconstitutional, the court has a responsibility to strike it down. But a marked pattern of invalidating Congressional laws certainly seems like one reasonable definition of judicial activism.

Since the Supreme Court assumed its current composition in 1994, by our count it has upheld or struck down 64 Congressional provisions. That legislation has concerned Social Security, church and state, and campaign finance, among many other issues. We examined the court's decisions in these cases and looked at how each justice voted, regardless of whether he or she concurred with the majority or dissented.

We found that justices vary widely in their inclination to strike down Congressional laws. Justice Clarence Thomas, appointed by President George H. W. Bush, was the most inclined, voting to invalidate 65.63 percent of those laws; Justice Stephen Breyer, appointed by President Bill Clinton, was the least, voting to invalidate 28.13 percent. The tally for all the justices appears below.

Thomas 65.63 %
Kennedy 64.06 %
Scalia 56.25 %
Rehnquist 46.88 %
O’Connor 46.77 %
Souter 42.19 %
Stevens 39.34 %
Ginsburg 39.06 %
Breyer 28.13 %

One conclusion our data suggests is that those justices often considered more "liberal" – Justices Breyer, Ruth Bader Ginsburg, David Souter and John Paul Stevens – vote least frequently to overturn Congressional statutes, while those often labeled "conservative" vote more frequently to do so. At least by this measure (others are possible, of course), the latter group is the most activist."

http://www.nytimes.com/2005/07/06/opinion/06gewirtz.html?_r=1&incamp=article_popular&oref=slogin

In their first year of sitting on the bench, both Roberts and Alito, along with perennial precedence rejectors, Thomas and Scalia, quickly moved to strike down precedence on many cases.

That earns them their more apt titles… "Strict Deconstructionists".

The political court horse left the barn a long time ago. That's the reason another GOP president is completley out of the question.

2/3rds of America reject the intolerant, racist, corporate friendly concepts the 4 horsemen of the Supreme Court Apocalypse were appointed to defend.

Hillary will, at the very least, not allow the Court to fall any further into the dark depths of anti-Constitutional jurisprudence.

Uh, excuse me for a minute. I think I'm going to be sick.

Okay, I'm back. On a scale of 1 to 10, how political do you think those nominations would be ? Did you say 11 ? Yeah, I think so too. We have to do everything possible to defeat Hillary. I'm not too thrilled with anybody on the Republican side either, but I am very afraid of the damage that woman would do to our country. I'm all for a woman president, just not her.

Why in hell can't people let the judges make their decisions without being afraid that they may not get home the day they make the wrong decision. It is so sad that what the founders wanted to happen has been shoved aside and politicians have moved in and done what they have done. It is so sad that Roe v. Wade is the measuring stick for anything to do with the rest of the laws of the US but it has become just that.