If Jimmy Carter is defeated in November, he will become the only American President who, after serving an entire term, was denied the honor of appointing a Supreme Court Justice. Nevertheless, he is deep in the process of reshaping the federal courts. Ironically, while Carter’s legislative successes have been at best meager, the effects of his appointments to the federal judiciary will be felt by our institutions and the public long after the legislative victories of the Kennedy, Johnson, Nixon, and Ford Administrations have been forgotten.
Federal judges, as a group, probably have more to say about the future of the United States than do both houses of Congress. Each judge is appointed for life and serves without having to face re-election, is accountable to nobody, and has, if he wants to exercise it, implicit authority to interpret and change the laws Congress has made, to fill the holes sometimes deliberately left in statutes by Congress, and to create entirely new rights and remedies for litigants. The appointment of a liberal judge willing to use such power can have profound results certainly unforeseen by the Founding Fathers.
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