Supreme Court and the Presidential Election The average retirement age of Supreme Court justices over the past generation is 80. While they have announced no plans to retire, Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg is 79 and Justices Antonin Scalia and Anthony Kennedy are 76. It is likely the next president will fill one or more seats. If Mitt Romney has the chance to replace Justice Ginsburg, that could turn the court decidedly conservative for another generation. If President Obama is re-elected and has the chance to replace Justice Scalia or Justice Kennedy, that could turn the court more moderate. The Nation magazine has dedicated much of its new issue to what it calls "The 1 Percent Court" and why this election matters for what's arguably "the most powerful branch of government" in an era of political gridlock. "Does anyone think Barry Goldwater would have chosen Thurgood Marshall?," the introduction asks: "Or John Kerry, Samuel Alito?" Conservative court-packing began a generation ago when Lewis Powell, then a corporate lawyer, later a justice, urged the U.S. Chamber of Commerce to focus on the Supreme Court in a campaign to re-take "the American economic system" for large corporations. The chamber's recent success along these lines has been stunning, helping persuade the justices to diminish access to the courts for the poor and middle class, and thwart class actions against corporate discrimination. The Nation says the Roberts court "bulldozed the foundational understanding of the corporation that had governed American law for two centuries" with Citizens United, allowing CEOs "to reach into their corporate treasuries to bankroll campaigns promoting or opposing the election of candidates for Congress or president." In response to Justice Scalia's defense of this ruling as Jeffersonian, the magazine says, "One must charitably assume Scalia's utter ignorance of Jefferson's political philosophy and how much the Sage of Monticello feared the rise of a 'single and splendid government of an aristocracy, founded on banking institutions, and moneyed incorporations.'" Voters may be chiefly concerned with the state of the economy, but the election is about more than that.