President-elect Donald Trump will likely have his pick of Associate Justice for the United States Supreme Court, due to a resounding victory for Republicans on Election Day.
President Barack Obama's pick, Merrick Garland, will probably be swept aside in favor of a conservative choice who "will not do damage to the Second Amendment" and let abortion decisions "to go back to the states," as he said in the final presidential debate, according to USA Today.
Despite Trump's success, his pick of justice might not be as influential as he hopes.
"The court is pretty conservative now, so there's not a lot of room to go," David Strauss of the University of Chicago Law School told USA Today. The court has generally sided with the conservative position in cases on campaign finance, religious liberty and gun rights.
Moderate conservative Justice Anthony M. Kennedy often sides with the liberal side of the court on social issues, such as same-sex marriage.
Kennedy, along with Justices Ruth Bader Ginsburg and Stephen G. Breyer, give liberals hope that the court's rulings on issues like affirmative action an abortion rights are secure.
"A lot of the big things are actually ones on which the court already has a so-called liberal majority," Neal K. Katyal, Obama's acting solicitor general, said last month before the court's term began, according to The Washington Post.
In September, Trump released a list of 21 potential Supreme Court nominees.
"We have a very clear choice in this election. The freedoms we cherish and the constitutional values and principles our country was founded on are in jeopardy. The responsibility is greater than ever to protect and uphold these freedoms and I will appoint justices, who like Justice Scalia, will protect our liberty with the highest regard for the Constitution," he said in a statement, USA Today reports.
"This list is definitive and I will choose only from it in picking future Justices of the United States Supreme Court."
On Twitter, Trump supporters are raving about the potential for a conservative Supreme Court pick:
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