I actually cannot recall a presidential election when that claim wasn't made, usually by both sides of the aisle. That doesn't mean it isn't true, of course, but it is getting a bit tiresome.
It is likely that the next president will get to nominated, even in a 4-year term, 1-3 Supreme Court justices. So as you're evaluating folk in the polls and who you prefer to vote for (or vote against), consider the potential nominees of each — tempered by what the US Senate will approve of, to be sure, but even in these polarized times SCOTUS nominees aren't likely to be blocked for long.
What sort of justices would Cruz nominate? Or Clinton? Or Trump? Or Sanders? Or Bush? Those appointments will long outlast any presidential term. And given where we are with various cultural and legal issues, the decisions those justices make will have long-term impact on issues like abortion, religious freedom, voting and campaign finance, guns, pollution, and more.
Something to consider indeed.
Why The Most Urgent Civil Rights Cause Of Our Time Is The Supreme Court Itself
The future composition of the Supreme Court is the most important civil rights cause of our time. It is more important than racial justice, marriage equality, voting rights, money in politics, abortion rights, gun rights, or managing climate change. It matters more because the ability to move forward in these other civil rights struggles depends first and foremost upon control of the Court. And control for the next generation is about to be up fo…
Citizens united
+keith olszewski The extent to which CU's model of corporate speech being at least as free (and able to spend money in proxy) as human citizen speech continues to grow, or is given boundaries, is a key issue that the future composition of the court will determine.