Likely Liberal Expansion in Judiciary

The left is salivating over the possibilities of gaining liberal appointments to the federal judiciary. In a Reuters article:

"He has an opportunity and a window to select judges who can restore balance on these circuits and extend protections to workers, women and people of color, constitutional protections, that the Bush judges have refused to do," said Nan Aron, president of the liberal Alliance for Justice.

I thought that our constitution handled such protections and that it is the judiciary's responsibility to weigh legal issues against those protections.

Of course, the Supreme Court is the ultimate arbiter for those issues and is likely to remain in roughly the same balance of liberal and conservative justices for the next four years, but the lower courts will present many opportunities for appointing extremist liberal judges. With the balance of power in the Senate being decidedly shifted toward the Democrats, at least the next two years promise to provide a significant shift leftward among the federal judiciary. We can only hope that the typical swing in favor of Republican candidates in the next election will stem the tide in time.