SUPREME COURT FUTURE: Gorsuch Fight Just The Beginning.

President Trump’s selection of Neil Gorsuch to fill Antonin Scalia’s seat on the Supreme Court is likely to produce a procedural frenzy in the Senate as Democrats try to show their base that they are “resisting” the new Administration as much as they can and taking revenge on the Republicans for holding up the Merrick Garland nomination during an election year. Nevertheless, the Democrats’ acts of resistance are unlikely to change much in the long run. Gorsuch, a respected conservative jurist, is expected make it through the Senate, filibuster or no, and his presence on the Court will not change the ideological balance that (as Scott Lemieux noted last year) has defined the institution for decades: a moderate Republican—currently, Anthony Kennedy—as the “median justice” and swing vote on high-impact questions dividing the court.

The real test of the strength of our constitutional system will most likely come when the next vacancy on the High Court is filled. If Donald Trump gets the opportunity to replace Ruth Bader Ginsburg or Anthony Kennedy, or if Trump is succeeded by a Democrat who fills a vacancy left by Kennedy or Clarence Thomas, then we will be looking at an unprecedented transformation of the Court in the modern era. As FiveThirtyEight‘s Oliver Roeder has pointed out, either scenario could produce one of the most ideologically extreme median justices “in almost a century.”

Well, that depends on your measure of “ideologically extreme.” For example, if your basis for comparison is the electorate, then it will probably be one of the least such.