We could have a battle brewing on the Supreme Court between the old guard and the new guard among conservatives.
While Chief Justice Roberts has proven he is more moderate than anything else, Justices Thomas and Alito are old-school, meaning history-centric in their decisions.
All three of Trump’s justices have a new school feel about their methodology, especially Justice Amy Coney Barrett, and it is starting to create some problems.
Out With the Old, in With the New
A recent case before the court has stirred things up a bit.
This is a gun law called United States v. Rahimi.
The case will decide if people with domestic restraining orders can still have a firearm.
Barrett and Thomas have been feuding over this case, but it came out in a different case where both of them actually came to the same conclusion.
Do you remember the trademark case for those nasty anti-Trump t-shirts? Well, both Barrett and Thomas came to the same conclusion, only they got there in different ways.
Thomas penned the majority decision, but Barrett decided to write her own opinion, clearly taking a shot at Thomas.
Barrett wrote, “The views of preceding generations can persuade, and, in the realm of stare decisis, even bind.
“But tradition is not an end in itself — and I fear that the Court uses it that way here.”
A former clerk for Thomas, Catholic University law professor Jennifer Mascott, picked up on this.
She wrote, “It does seem to me that Justice Barrett is trying to lay down a marker of at least some limitation or clarity in terms of where she and the others on the court see ‘history and tradition’ moving in the future.
“Justice Barrett is basically raising questions that could really shift and perhaps limit the impact of the way specific [historical] examples are used.”
Now, we expect Alito and Thomas to block the law that would prevent gun ownership in the case mentioned above, and it is a guarantee that all three liberal justices will vote to block the law.
Signs point to Barrett siding with the liberals in that case, which means she only needs to turn one more justice, and Roberts, Gorsuch, and Kavanaugh are all fair game on this one.
This could swing the nature of the court, if Thomas and Alito lose this argument, my bet is that if a Republican wins in November, they are going to seriously consider retiring, knowing full well their way of thinking is becoming ancient news on the court.