It’s not hard to imagine scenarios where this could have happened. I’ll give one example, though there are many: Clarence Thomas suffers a fatal heart attack at age 51 in 1999, so Bill Clinton gets to appoint a liberal Justice to replace him, Obama gets to appoint a Justice to replace Scalia (i.e., McConnell is shamed into allowing a vote), and Ruth Bader Ginsburg hangs on for a few more months until Biden is in office. In other words, if there were a 6-3 Democratic-appointed majority throughout the past few decades, what would be the major differences in how U.S. policies would have taken shape? No other differences, although the question of what would have happened in the 2000 election probably would have been impacted, so let’s just assume for that one that Bush would have won Florida fair and square, so we’d have the same Presidents elected, same Senators, etc.
I’m not sure what would be different, but in the spirit of not wishing harm on anyone, even Clarence Thomas, I’d offer a slightly different scenario. Let’s say Bush Sr. makes a similar mistake (from his perspective) that he did with David Souter, and ends up appointing a liberal justice who he mistakenly thought would be conservative, rather than appointing Clarence Thomas.
ETA: Or maybe Thurgood Marshall’s health holds out a little longer and Bill Clinton gets to appoint his successor.
I assume the OP is asking what such a hypothetical Supreme Court would do.
Probably just uphold gay marriage, pass a few more Roe-supportive rulings, expand LGBT rulings and make some more, uphold Obamacare, some gun-control rulings, labor/work/tax stuff, etc. Pretty predictable.
Probably confirm that the president is not above the law. Actually, it’s likely that they would not have even been asked to make a ruling on such an idiotic question.
Incidentally, there hasn’t been at least six Democratic appointees since the 1950s.
Yes, although Eisenhower and Nixon appointed some Justices that turned out to be surprisingly liberal so we didn’t really get a conservative majority until this century.
They did appoint some liberal justices, among the most notable being Earl Warren, who was appointed by Eisenhower. But the conservative majority isn’t quite that recent. That came about in the 80s when Reagan got to appoint 4 justices, most notably William Rehnquist as chief justice as well as Antonin Scalia.
ETA: My mistake on Rehnquist. Reagan merely elevated him to chief justice. Either way, however, the latest date that I would put on the court flipping was when Bush Sr. appointed Clarence Thomas to replace Thurgood Marshall.
And that is why i consider the Republican Party to be complicit in the sabotage of American progress, decades before Trump. Despicable, cynical racism.