Supreme Court is Major Election Issue

Barring unforeseen events, as of July 2016, three sitting Supreme Court Justices will be 80 years old, or older. As the U.S. presidential election gears up, it has not been lost on political observers that the Court will be the oldest since George H. W. Bush was in Office. That means the next president will have a chance to fundamentally shape the Court for the next few decades. While Republican presidents have made 12 of the last 16 high court nominations, they have yet to win a reliable majority. The last time a Democratic president was given the chance to reshape the Court ideologically was in 1962.