The minoritarian third of the Supreme Court
The Supreme Court seems likely to significantly scale back access to abortion when it rules on a Mississippi law that sharply limits the procedure — if the court doesn’t overturn Roe v. Wade entirely. That’s a function of the court’s shift to the right following the confirmation of its three most recently added justices, the three added by President Donald Trump during his term in office.
The three, it turns out, nominated by a president who lost the popular vote and confirmed by senators representing less of the country’s population and who had received fewer cumulative votes than those who opposed the nominations.
This is a body that’s unusually intertwined with the institutions most likely to disproportionately award power to political minorities: the electoral college and the Senate. Trump’s election in 2016 was a function of his narrow victory margins in three states that gave him an electoral vote majority despite losing the popular vote. The Senate similarly rewards less populous, more rural — and more Republican — states with disproportionate power. Combined, we get a situation like the current court.
There are nine sitting justices, four of whom were confirmed by large majorities in the Senate. Another four — Clarence Thomas, Neil M. Gorsuch, Brett M. Kavanaugh and Amy Coney Barrett — received fewer than 55 votes for confirmation.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2021/12/02/minoritarian-third-supreme-court/
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