Is 8 enough? Court vacancy could roil possible election case

Last time, the court was down one justice for more than a year, when McConnell and the Republicans refused to act on President Barack Obama’s nomination of Judge Merrick Garland.University of Kentucky law professor Joshua Douglas, who worried in 2016 about what he called a nightmare 4-4 election case outcome at the Supreme Court, said it would be worse in 2020 if Trump and McConnell move quickly to fill the seat and the election results wind up in court.“To me, the scarier prospect is having a 5-4 decision on a presidential election where the swing vote comes from a new justice,” appointed by the candidate who would get another four years in the White House as a result, Douglas said. The most notable issue the justices put off deciding may have been challenges to the death penalty, according to Bob Woodward and Scott Armstrong’s book “The Brethren.” It was another two years, after the retirements of two more justices, before the court took up the issue and struck down every state death penalty statute.The Supreme Court heard about 150 cases in those years — twice as many as today — and Blackmun had to deal with hundreds of appeals in which his vote would determine whether or the not the case was heard.