The single most important reason to vote

You’re looking at it. The Supreme Court.

It all comes down to that. Judges.

During a fall campaign dominated by the economic crisis, debate over two wars and arguments over who is more fit for office, discussion of how the next president will handle Supreme Court nominations largely has been overshadowed. Even so, the differing experiences of Obama, McCain and their running mates offer clues as to how the candidates might approach vacancies on the bench.

More than experiences, their own statements have declared the judicial philosophy that guides their view of law and the Constitution. But other than this piece in USAToday, there’s been hardly a mention in the media.

“People don’t realize how much is at stake,” says Walter Dellinger, who as U.S. solicitor general under President Clinton was the government’s top lawyer before the court from 1996-97.

“It is highly likely there will be (up to) three vacancies in the next president’s first term,” says Theodore Olson, U.S. solicitor general from 2001-04. “Justices serve on average 25 years. That’s six presidential terms. They make life or death decisions.”

The two candidates take opposite views of that role.

Based on their backgrounds and outlooks, Obama and Biden likely would be centrally involved in the selection process. Obama says he wants a justice who will “stand up” for the disadvantaged.

Which means imposing their own personal ideologies on the matters before the court, instead of impartially applying Constitutional law.

McCain and Palin likely would hew to the values of their conservative base and seek nominees who would narrowly interpret the law, rather than expansively construe it to solve problems of the underdog. McCain has said he does not want judges who will reach out to solve social problems that might be best left to elected officials.

That’s not the job of the federal judiciary. Obama believes it is. Whoever controls Supreme Court appointments will shape the fabric of the culture, dramatically, for a very long time.

“It is not at all implausible that we are nominating someone for the next 50 years,” says Northwestern University law professor John McGinnis.

As emerging technology introduces new legal questions, and gay marriage and other contemporary issues reach the courts, the next decades will bring a wide and unpredictable swath of cases. The court also is likely to see continued challenges to Roe v. Wade, the 1973 decision that made abortion legal nationwide.

“Roe v. Wade is at the top of the list” of what could be immediately at stake in court appointments, Cornell University law professor Michael Dorf says. He emphasizes that the bench would change more dramatically if a McCain pick succeeded a liberal. Five justices — a bare majority that includes the four liberals — have endorsed the 1973 landmark ruling on abortion.

Landmark, because nowhere in the Constitution does any such right exist. Blackmun fabricated it, and even liberal pro-choice judges, lawyers and professors consider it bad law. But it has claimed about 50 million lives since 1973….and counting.