We should call out ‘the absolute hypocrisy of the senate majority’: Marc Morial

President Trump plans to announce is Supreme Court pick on Saturday to replace the late Ruth Bader Ginsburg. Marc Morial, National Urban League President & CEO, joins The Final Round to discuss the impact of the Supreme Court, its legacy with civil unrest in the United States, and what steps have been taken to actively solve some of the problems through the U.S. legal system.

Video Transcript

SIBILE MARCELLUS: Welcome back to "2020, A Time for Change." I'm Sibile Marcellus. President Trump plans to announce his Supreme Court pick on Saturday. That means that it'll be a race against the clock for Senate Republicans who want to get a conservative judge on the Supreme Court by Election Day. So what impact will that have on the country's judicial system?

Joining us now is Marc Morial. He's the President and CEO of the National Urban League. Marc, are you worried about having a conservative woman on the Supreme Court? And what impact do you think that would have on the country's legal system?

MARC MORIAL: Well there's no doubt-- and thank you for having me on Yahoo Finance. There's no doubt that add another conservative to the Supreme Court could unalterably for the foreseeable future affect the direction of the court.

The Court's relatively been balanced between-- it's been 5-4 conservative. But you've had justice Kennedy, and now Justice Roberts, sort of sitting in the middle of the Court serving as a swing vote from time to time on many important cases. I'm concerned that so much is at risk.

Health care is at risk. A woman's right to choose is at risk. The fate of the Voting Rights Act is at risk with an alteration of the Court. But what I'm also concerned about is just the outright hypocrisy we see from the Senate majority.

Four years ago, they were absolutely rigid and unyielding in standing on principle to say, we cannot confirm a Supreme Court justice in a year of an election. Let's let the voters decide. Now they've reversed course on a principle and a precedent they established, which means that the American people, the American people are being violated.

The sense of integrity, the sense of consistency is being violated, because now there's a rush to not only fill a seat in the year of an election, but to fill a seat with almost 30 days to go before the end of voting. People are voting now. The election is under way now. So it's an act of hypocrisy.

And I think it's also an effort to hijack the direction of the Court, which is deeply offensive to me. And it's something that we have got to resist. My hope is that there are enough Republican senators who stand on that principle and say, we're not going to violate that principle. We're not going to violate the precedent we set four years ago for political expediency.

SIBILE MARCELLUS: Marc, from the death of George Floyd to the shooting of Jacob Blake, what role do you think Supreme Court justices can have in terms of helping us achieve change when it comes to issues such as police brutality? And do you think President Trump's nominee could help with that?

MARC MORIAL: Well, certainly a justice who's going to be-- look, cases relative to police misconduct and brutality rarely get to the Supreme Court. But I can tell you, many civil rights issues and voting rights issues and affirmative action issues do get to the Supreme Court. Less than 10 years ago-- and people have talked about Shelby v. Holder.

To me, Shelby v. Holder is one of the tragic decisions in the history of the Supreme Court. I think it will be remembered the way the Dred Scott decision is remembered, the way the Plessy v. Ferguson decision is remembered-- that they tortured the logic, they misconstrued the Constitution, and they did it all in the name of political power, not in the name of applying the law to the facts, applying the Constitution to the facts.

So I think the Supreme Court could be extremely potentially highly influential with respect to this. But supreme courts also set tones in the country, the way presidents set tones, the way Congress, meaning the House and the Senate, set tones as to whether they're going to be on the side of due process, on the side of protection of rights. This is what makes the Warren court, the court in the 1950s and the 1960s-- which really continued to affect the nation into the '70s and the '80s-- so influential they stood up. They shaped jurisprudence to meet the needs of the times. And in many respects, by doing so they held the country together.

KRISTIN MYERS: So Marc, I saw a really interesting cartoon that likened the Democrats and the Republicans to Charlie Brown and the football and Lucy, with Lucy constantly, as we all know, pulling the football out from underneath Charlie Brown, which would in this case be the Democrats. But we're already now in a situation, as you mentioned-- the election-- some six weeks away.

For the American people and for activists like yourself, organizations like the National Urban League, what do we do now today on September 24, September 25, October 10 in the run-up to the election when the Senate decides, hey, we're going to move ahead with that Supreme Court nominee. What can we the people do? Or do we just have to sit back and say, listen, this is going to be a lesson for us in the future. This is a lesson for Democrats in the future.

MARC MORIAL: We have to vote for change. I mean, people have to be willing to say, if you like the direction of the country, if you're better off today than you were four years ago, maybe you vote for the status quo. If you are-- and I say this in my personal capacity, right? If you are worse off today and if you believe the country is in the wrong direction, then your option is to vote for change, change in a significant and meaningful way.

What I hope people do is turn out in record numbers. The most powerful thing would be a record voter turnout across the board so that the voice of the people can be heard in this election. But I think we have to call out the hypocrisy, the absolute hypocrisy of the Senate majority, who just seem to be hell-bent to manipulate the rules to grab power.

In a democracy, it's the rule of law. In the Senate, precedent is often observed. It's not as though the precedent was forced on them. They set the precedent.

Go look at Lindsey Graham's words. Use my words against me. He said, we're setting a precedent here. We need to understand-- and very conveniently, and quickly without any deliberation, he switches course and says, I'll vote for whatever the president wants.

SIBILE MARCELLUS: Well, Marc, we're definitely keep an eye out on that and see what happens, if the Senate Republicans tried to push through President Trump's nominee before the election. But Marc Morial, we don't want you to go anywhere, because we want to continue this conversation after this quick break.