Law

With the rumor that Justice Kennedy might retire comes the discussion on who might replace him and that brings up the old argument by conservatives that they want what is called an originalist. They mean a person who will interpret the Constitution as written. This rather nebulous wording has become clearer with the recent decision on the Trump travel ban. Two lower courts ruled against Trump basing their decision on things other than the wording of the law, things like what Trump said while campaigning. The Supreme Court ruled based only on the written word and overturned the lower court. It was not a political decision as the lower courts seems to have been since the judges ruled 9 to 0. Normally unanimously Supreme Court rulings are quite common and during the Obama years the court ruled 9 to 0 twenty times against Obama. He was issuing presidential executive orders based on things he thought would help people but not based on law and so the court which follows the law overturned his orders.