NEXT PRESIDENT COULD RECAST SUPREME COURT

Once again during a presidential election year, news stories and pundits have it that the make-up of the U.S. Supreme Court will be an election issue. Whether this will be an actual voting issue for many Americans is very much in doubt. It never has been before, despite many such predictions. Still, there can be no doubt about the high stakes concerning who gets to make these crucial appointments.

Three or four justices are either past 80 years of age, cancer survivors or are known to be desirous of retiring after decades on the high court.

One who has been reported to be considering retirement is Justice Antonin Scalia, who joins with the younger Clarence Thomas to be the most consistently conservative members of the court. At age 60, Scalia is known to be sufficiently frustrated with the judicial activism of his colleagues to consider quitting. The upshot is that the next president could easily make three, possibly four or even five court appointments were he to serve two terms.

In a series of key cases, the court has been sharply divided in 5-4 decisions, with the pivotal swing vote belonging to cancer survivor Justice Sandra Day O'Connor. This was true on the recent Nebraska case in which a five-member majority struck down that state's law banning partial-birth abortion. In that case, O'Connor wrote her name in dishonor by writing the majority opinion that will some day rank alongside such opinions as the infamous 1858 Dred Scott decision that sanctioned slavery and denied any and all rights to African-Americans. This series of case results has many commentators calling O'Connor the most powerful person in America.

Among others in the category of possible retirement include Justices John Paul Stevens (age 80) and Ruth Bader Ginsburg, who had cancer surgery last year. Both were in the narrow majority in the infamous Nebraska partial-birth abortion decision.

What has never been clear is just how many Americans make the Supreme Court an actual voting decision when the go to the polls the first Tuesday after the first Monday in November. Most political professionals will tell you that it just doesn't happen this way. Perhaps, with the stakes this high, they should. Many students of the stakes regard it as the most important issue in the election.