ECONOMIST: The Supreme Court may be about to take a hard-right turn

经济学人：最高法院可能会向右转

 If Donald Trump manages to install a new justice

如果唐纳德·特朗普设法建立一个新的司法系统

RUTH BADER GINSBURG, the trailblazing liberal justice who died aged 87 on September 18th, will lie in repose at the top of the Supreme Court’s steps on Wednesday and Thursday. As mourners pay their respects, Donald Trump and his advisers will be huddling a few miles across town to pick a nominee to replace her. The choice, Mr Trump said on September 21st, will be revealed on Friday or Saturday—days before Ms Ginsburg is to be buried at Arlington National Cemetery.

露丝·巴德·金斯伯格(RUTH BADER GINSBURG)，这位开创性的自由主义法官于9月18日去世，享年87岁，将于周三和周四在最高法院的台阶上安息。当哀悼者表达敬意时，唐纳德·特朗普和他的顾问们将聚集在几英里外的镇上，挑选一名候选人来接替她。特朗普在9月21日表示，这一选择将于周五或周六揭晓——在金斯伯格女士被安葬在阿灵顿国家公墓的前几天。

Though she gained widespread celebrity as a lion of the liberal legal movement later in her career, Ms Ginsburg arrived at the Supreme Court as a moderate in 1993. The president who tapped her, Bill Clinton, said “she cannot be called a liberal or a conservative” as she has “proved herself too thoughtful for such labels”. Indeed, several progressive groups, including the Alliance for Justice, expressed misgivings at the time that she might not be bold enough on the bench.

尽管金斯伯格女士在职业生涯的后期作为自由法律运动的领袖获得了广泛的声誉，但她在1993年以温和派的身份来到最高法院。接触她的总统比尔·克林顿(Bill Clinton)表示，“她不能被称为自由派或保守派”，因为她“证明了自己太体贴了，不适合贴这样的标签”。事实上，包括正义联盟在内的几个进步团体当时都表示担忧，认为她在法官席位上可能不够大胆。

Those worries gradually ebbed as Ms Ginsburg began a steady path to the left, leaving her, at the end of her career, paired with Sonia Sotomayor as the more progressive half of the liberal quartet of justices. But with Mr Trump in the White House and a 53-47 Republican majority in the Senate, chances seem strong that her seat—and the court—will be radically refashioned by its next occupant despite howls of protest from Democrats.

随着金斯伯格女士开始稳步向左派发展，这些担忧逐渐消退，在她的职业生涯结束时，她与索尼娅·索托马约尔一起成为自由派法官四重奏中更进步的一半。但随着特朗普入主白宫，共和党在参议院以53票对47票获得多数席位，她的席位——以及法院——将被下一任主人彻底改变的可能性似乎很大，尽管民主党人对此表示抗议。

Five women are under consideration. The leading contender is Amy Coney Barrett, a long-time law professor at Notre Dame chosen by Mr Trump for a judgeship on the Seventh Circuit Court of Appeals in 2017. Another is Barbara Lagoa, a state-court judge from Florida whom Mr Trump elevated to the Eleventh Circuit Court of Appeals just last year. Judges Barrett or Lagoa, or any of the three other short-listers, would join the court on its right flank. All seem skeptical that the constitution protects abortion rights; Judge Barrett, a devout Roman Catholic, has declared abortion to be “always immoral”.

五名妇女正在考虑之中。主要竞争者是艾米·科尼·巴雷特(Amy Coney Barrett)，她是圣母大学的长期法学教授，特朗普于2017年选择她担任第七巡回上诉法院的法官。另一位是芭芭拉·拉戈阿，佛罗里达州的一名州法院法官，特朗普去年刚刚将她提升到第十一巡回上诉法院。巴雷特法官或拉戈阿法官，或其他三名入围者中的任何一名，将加入法院的右翼。所有人似乎都对宪法保护堕胎权持怀疑态度；虔诚的罗马天主教徒巴雷特法官宣称堕胎“总是不道德的”。

How to measure the impact of a new judge? One method comes from two political scientists, Andrew Martin of Washington University in St Louis and Kevin Quinn of the University of Michigan, who have measured the ideological balance of the court, and its individual justices, going back to 1937. The Martin-Quinn score, as it is known, ranks each justice based on how likely they are to vote for the “conservative” or “liberal” outcome in any given case, based on their votes in past contested court cases. It also estimates the position of a putative “median justice”, which suggests the court has leaned to the right since the mid-1970s.

如何衡量新法官的影响力？一种方法来自两位政治学家，圣路易斯华盛顿大学的安德鲁·马丁和密歇根大学的凯文·奎因，他们从1937年就开始测量法院及其法官的意识形态平衡。众所周知，马丁-奎因评分根据每个法官在任何特定案件中投票支持“保守”或“自由”结果的可能性，以及他们在过去有争议的法庭案件中的投票情况，对每个法官进行排名。它还估计了一个假定的“中间正义”的地位，这表明法院自20世纪70年代中期以来一直倾向于右翼。

Judge Barrett does not have a voting history on the court, and therefore no Martin-Quinn score. To approximate one, we rely on a separate ideological measure for Appeals and Circuit court judges known as the Judicial Common Space (JCS) score. We combined the JCS and Martin-Quinn scores for existing justices on the Supreme Court, and compared these with the JCS score of Ms Coney Barrett, derived from her votes on the Seventh Circuit. We estimate that Ms Coney Barrett stands to the right of Brett Kavanaugh and Neil Gorsuch, Mr Trump’s first two appointees, but to the left of Samuel Alito and Clarence Thomas (see chart above).

巴雷特法官在法庭上没有投票记录，因此没有马丁·奎因的分数。大致来说，我们依赖于一个独立的上诉和巡回法院法官的意识形态衡量标准，称为司法公共空间(JCS)分数。我们结合了最高法院现有法官的JCS和马丁-奎因分数，并将这些分数与科内·巴雷特女士的JCS分数进行了比较，后者来自她在第七巡回法院的投票。我们估计科尼·巴雷特女士站在布雷特·卡瓦诺和尼尔·戈鲁奇的右边，他们是特朗普的前两个被任命者，但站在塞缪尔·阿利托和克拉伦斯·托马斯的左边(见上图)。

Despite the court’s conservative tilt, Chief Justice John Roberts, appointed by George W. Bush, has in recent times tacked towards the centre to fashion several 5-4 decisions preventing Mr Trump from adding a citizenship question to the 2020 census and from cancelling protections for undocumented immigrants. He also anchored a narrow victory for abortion rights. But with a new Republican-selected nominee, even one in the broad centre of conservatism, the chief will be unable to play his balancing role.

尽管法院倾向于保守，但由乔治·布什任命的首席大法官约翰·罗伯茨最近却转向中心做出几个5-4的决定，阻止特朗普在2020年人口普查中增加公民身份问题，并取消对无证移民的保护。他还以微弱优势赢得了堕胎权。但是有了一个新的共和党提名人，即使是一个保守主义的中间派，这位领导人也无法发挥他的平衡作用。

A pitched battle looms. Democrats say Republicans are reneging on the principle they themselves established in 2016—when they refused to let Barack Obama fill Justice Antonin Scalia’s seat—that during election years, the next president should fill Supreme Court vacancies. Republicans (despite the misgivings of two of their senators) now say it is their duty to fill the seat as soon as possible.

一场激战迫在眉睫。民主党人表示，共和党人正在违背他们自己在2016年确立的原则——当时他们拒绝让巴拉克·奥巴马(Barack Obama)填补安东宁·斯卡利亚(Antonin Scalia)大法官的席位——即在选举年，下一任总统应该填补最高法院的空缺。共和党人(尽管他们的两名参议员有疑虑)现在表示，尽快填补席位是他们的责任。

Both sides are right: Senate confirmations of Supreme Court nominees have occurred many times in American history during election years, not least when former Justice Anthony Kennedy took the bench in 1988 (see second chart).

双方都是对的:参议院对最高法院提名人的确认在美国历史上的选举年发生过多次，尤其是前大法官安东尼·肯尼迪(Anthony Kennedy)在1988年担任法官时(见第二张图表)。

But by playing both sides of this game four years apart, Republican tactics are understandably infuriating to Democrats. In response, some on the left propose expanding the size of the Supreme Court in an ideological re-balancing effort should their party win control of the Oval Office and Senate in the November election. Thus far, Joe Biden, the Democratic nominee, has resisted these calls.

但通过四年一场的博弈，共和党的策略激怒了民主党，这是可以理解的。作为回应，一些左翼人士提议，如果他们的政党在11月的选举中赢得对椭圆形办公室和参议院的控制权，就应该扩大最高法院的规模，以实现意识形态上的重新平衡。迄今为止，民主党提名人乔·拜登一直拒绝这些呼吁。

In the absence of such a change, or other reforms such as limits to justices’ tenure, Mr Trump’s next pick will lead the court to a sharp right turn that may last for decades.

本文章原文来自经济学人，不代表公众号立场