You go Girl....
'Epilogue to the Paperback Edition: The Crossroad '
"But there is another, deeper reason why the American right needs to retain its grasp on the Supreme Court. They have ambitious plans for the high Court-plans that rival anything conservative litigators have attempted since
the Lochner Era. But all those plans will be ruined if the Court tips to the left.
The one empty seat on the Supreme Court could swell to four, as there are three other seats occupied by justices who are quite elderly. When the next president is sworn in, Justices Anthony Kennedy and Ruth Bader Ginsburg will both be older than 80; Justice Stephen Breyer will be not far behind at 78. That means that the next president could fill as many as four seats on the Supreme Court.
It is worth noting, moreover, that Kennedy, Ginsburg, and Breyer were all in the majority in King. If they are all replaced by justices more akin to Scalia,
millions of people could lose their health care in a heartbeat.
There are many key players in the conservative legal establishment who would happily take matters much further than that. House Judiciary Chair Bob GoodIatte has said that Medicare, Medicaid, and Social Security are all unconstitutional." Senator Mike Lee-a former clerk to Justice Alito and potential Supreme Court nominee in a Republican administration=-has, at various times, claimed that child labor laws, food stamps, the Food and Drug Administration, federal disaster relief, Medicaid, income assistance for the poor, Medicare, and Social Security all violate the Constitution." Justice Clarence Thomas, of course, embraces the same narrow reading of Congress's power to regulate commerce that animated many decisions in the Lochner Era.25
If someone sharing these views is elected president in 2016, their justices could join with Thomas to rethink nearly eight decades of constitutional law. The Affordable Care Act, the Civil Rights Act, the right to join a union, the minimum wage, and even federal child labor laws could all be on the chopping block
But even if these most radical elements do not ultimately gain control of the Supreme Court, a Court filled with four more Scalia as or Alitos would be more conservative-and more willing to impose its will on the nation-than any Court since the Lochner Era. And, as King v. Burwell shows, the scope of such a Court's ambitions could not be anticipated simply by reading existing legal opinions or even by examining the new justices' own writings.
America would enter an age very much like the first Lochner Era, when t
he Court claimed the right to censor laws, regardless of whether they had a legal basis to do so."
Lochner era - Wikipedia
"
Few American institutions have inflicted greater suffering on ordinary people than the Supreme Court of the United States. Since its inception, the justices of the Supreme Court have shaped a nation where children toiled in coal mines, where Americans could be forced into camps because of their race, and where a woman could be sterilized against her will by state law. "
'Injustices: The Supreme Court's History of Comforting the Comfortable and Afflicting the Afflicted' Ian Millhiser
Injustices: The Supreme Court's History of Comforting the Comfortable and Afflicting the Afflicted by Ian Millhiser