With the confirmation of Brett Kavanaugh, the Supreme Court has a solidly conservative majority for the first time since the New Deal. Just how conservative this new majority is remains to be seen: Chief Justice John Roberts disappointed the Republican right when he voted to uphold the legality of Obamacare in 2012. But if Roberts is no Antonin Scalia, still the paragon of what most conservatives look for in a justice, he is no Anthony Kennedy, either. And with two of the four liberal justices — Ginsburg and Breyer — in their 80s, the prospect of a 6-3 or even 7-2 conservative majority is not remote. A second Trump term would almost certainly make a reality of it.
Republican justices have been known to ‘evolve' in the past, drifting leftward as they mellow with age or court the favour of liberal opinion. But the evolvers were the product of a different time, when conservative judicial philosophy was less well-defined and wasn't safeguarded by an institution like the Federalist Society. An Anthony Kennedy or a David Souter never had the commitments that the Republicans on the court now have. The amount of ‘evolution' that would be needed to make a liberal out of any of the current Republicans would be much greater than anything we've seen before. It's not impossible, but it's unlikely.
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