A Legacy Diminished: President Obama and the Courts
| Author | Clodagh Harrington, Alex Waddan |
| Position | Associate Professor, Department of Politics, De Montfort University/Associate Professor, School of History, Politics & International Relations, University of Leicester |
| Pages | 419-440 |
A central concern for any U.S. presidential administration is its relationship with
the federal judiciary. For an administration, this relationship is potentially legacy
making or breaking in two ways. First, what is the imprint that the administration
leaves on the judiciary? Will a president have the opportunities and institutional
capacity to change the political balance of the federal judiciary? Second, how will
the judicial branch respond when the administration’s policy plans are, as many
inevitably will be, challenged in the court system? Will the administration’s policy
preferences be preserved and its agenda advanced, or will court decisions stymie
important initiatives and restrict that agenda? This paper examines these questions
with regard to the Obama administration’s record. The Obama era saw new levels
of diversity in terms of judicial nominees and the courts did sometimes uphold key
aspects of the Obama administration’s program to the chagrin of conservative
Obama administration’s legacy with regard to both the central questions addressed in
the paper was a diminished one. The administration’s capacity to reorient the federal
bench was thwarted by the legislative branch, notably obstruction in Senate, with
the consequences of that frustration highlighted by the rapid actions taken by the
Trump administration and Senate Republicans in 2017-18. Furthermore, on balance,
Obama White House weakened rather than strengthened the administration’s legacy.
Obama, Supreme Court, Federal Judiciary, Presidential Legacy
© 2019 Clodagh Harrington, Alex Waddan, published by Sciendo.
This work is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 3.0 License.
8 Br. J. Am. Leg. Studies (2019)
420
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