As we wait the nomination, confirmation, and the assumption of office by Mr. Trump’s Supreme Court nominee we must bear in mind the following facts of life.
1. The president will nominate a person whose beliefs at the moment corresponds to his views on who should be sitting in the Supreme Court.
2. That person must necessarily sound and look and be seen as a conservative now.
3. The nominee will be a young person to maximize the person’s impact in the decades to come.
4. People grow and change their views over time as illustrated by Anthony Macleod Kennedy who was appointed by conservative President Reagan but who became neither a conservative justice nor a liberal or rather who was both conservative and liberal.
5. Predicting human future behavior is precarious at best
Given the above conditions especially items 4 & 5 Americans do not need to fear the future. Future events will determine how the justices vote on significant occurrences in a future date. There was a time when it was fashionable to have segregated schools and when anti miscegenation laws were on the books.
American people and American Supreme Court held that those views were OK and people who violated those principles were thrown into jails or lynched. America survived those periods, though not without many people paying very heavy fines for these discriminatory views.
It is to avoid anybody paying these unwholesome fines that the Senate must look into the eyes and minds of potential judges paraded before them to see if any would cause problems to a significant number of Americans. But should anyone pass through the eyes of this needle, we should learn to let go and hope that the Great Ruler of All Things will remedy the situation in the appointed time.
Americans have survived many Trumps of the past. This one will also pass.
Written by Benjamin Obiajulu Aduba.
