Hanging in the balance as the nation elected a new president was a U.S. Supreme Court vacancy created the previous February, when Justice Antonin Scalia died unexpectedly. Donald Trump, in fact, could wind up making multiple appointments to an aging court that includes Ruth Bader Ginsburg, 83; Anthony Kennedy, 80; and Stephen Breyer, 79.
 
Jeffrey Rosen, one of the nation’s preeminent authorities on the Supreme Court, discusses the significance of the shorthanded court, the resultant backlog of cases, and implications for the court’s ideological direction stemming from Trump’s election.
 
Rosen is president and CEO of the National Constitution Center, a law professor at George Washington University, and a contributing editor of The Atlantic.
 
Co-presented by the Truman Library Institute and the Historical Society for the Western District of Missouri (Howard Sachs Chapter).