Kennedy's retirement fallout..

Sen. Lee: Kennedy's retirement might not signal the end of abortion rights

By LOUIS NELSON

The Supreme Court vacancy created by retiring Justice Anthony Kennedy might not imperil abortion rights and same-sex marriage to the degree their defenders have suggested, Sen. Mike Lee said Thursday, thanks to legal doctrine that protects precedent.

Lee (R-Utah), one of 25 candidates President Donald Trump has preselected for nomination to the high court, is among the most conservative lawmakers in the Senate. But he said liberal precedents might not fare as badly with the court moving forward, as some have predicted.

“All of those issues involve cases that have been decided previously by the Supreme Court. It's one thing for them to assume that a Republican appointee might come at those issues from a different worldview as a matter of first impression,” Lee told Fox News’ “Fox & Friends,” the morning TV news show the president is known to favor.

“They have to take into account the doctrine of stare decisis, which is a doctrine that generally puts the Supreme Court on a path of following precedent,” he continued. “So, they can't know for sure how any one of those issues is going to turn out and whether any one of those cases might be overturned.”

The retirement of Kennedy, the swing justice who cast the deciding vote in favor of allowing same-sex marriage and in multiple abortion rights cases, has prompted significant concern among liberals that those precedents and others might be undone with a more conservative, Trump-appointed justice on the bench.

Already, Senate Democrats have demanded that confirmation hearings be delayed until after a new crop of senators are sworn in next year, offering voters the opportunity to weigh in in the same way that Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) insisted on for the seat left open after Justice Antonin Scalia died ahead of the 2016 presidential election.

McConnell, despite those calls, has already announced his intention to have the Senate hold a confirmation vote on Kennedy’s successor this fall.

Also on Trump’s list of potential Supreme Court appointees is Lee’s brother, Thomas Lee, a justice on Utah’s Supreme Court. Mike Lee told Fox News his brother is a “terrific jurist” in the mold of Scalia and Justices Neil Gorsuch, Samuel Alito and Clarence Thomas.

“I’d also really enjoy the opportunity to grill him as a member of the Senate Judiciary Committee,” the senator said.