ABSTRACT
The Supreme Court is at a transformational turning point in its handling of Civil Rights and Liberties, as a result of the addition of the three Trump justices. The world’s COVID-19 pandemic threatened in 2020 to challenge and perhaps undermine the civil liberties and rights of citizens in nations around the world. While Scalia was the man who dictated the way that the Court examined these issues; it was Kennedy’s vote, a man who followed neither of these philosophies, that determined the nature of Americans’ rights in case after case. The quality of a democracy can be measured by the degree to which it protects the rights of all its citizens, including those with unpopular views. Civil liberties are the individual freedoms and rights guaranteed to every United States citizen by the Bill of Rights and the due process clause of the Fourteenth Amendment.
