President Barack Obama has been given yet another opportunity to appoint a Supreme Court justice. Inevitably, there has been widespread debate as to who will replace Justice John Paul Stevens in his vital spot on the court.

President Obama’s nomination will be sure to have long-term implications for this country’s constitutional issues. To see this, you don’t need to look any further than the recent horrendous decision of the Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission (FEC) case.

It essentially decrees that during elections, colossal corporations can spend mammoth amounts of money for political ads. Clearly, the grounds on which this case was decided are dubious, to say the least. If the Supreme Court has truly been created in order to safeguard the rights of the feeble against the powerful, then this state of affairs cannot stand.

When the ordinary voice of an individual citizen is dampened solely because his pockets can’t hold even remotely close to the amount of money of corporate coffers, who will be there to champion the lonely speaker? There must be a countervailing force that protects the rights of the minority.

Whether it is infringing on the civil rights of an African American woman named Rosa Parks in Montgomery, Ala., or a member of the lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgendered community named Charlotte Rendon in Binghamton, discrimination must be replaced by equality and protection for all under the law. This can be done through the Supreme Court.

Accordingly, the Supreme Court ought to finally use its proper authority and get with the times. A number of states have already legalized gay marriage, so why doesn’t the Supreme Court grant members of the gay community the same constitutional rights that straight people enjoy? Thankfully, according to The Economist, one of the potential nominees, Solicitor General Elena Kagan, has stated that discrimination against homosexuals is “a moral injustice of the first order.”

Kagan is, in fact, the first woman to earn the position of solicitor general — no small feat, considering she is responsible for representing the U.S. government before the Supreme Court. However, aside from her personal accomplishments, Kagan appears to be an ideal nominee. Other than her definitive stance on the rights of the gay community, she is very much a moderate democrat like Justice Stevens; she stands for the fundamental right of free speech and the necessity of protecting the environment, but holds a more conservative stance on the executive branch’s expansive power.

Most significantly, Kagan was actually the person arguing the Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission case on behalf of the FEC. She asserted that lifting the century-long ban on corporate spending would exacerbate the problem of incumbency advantage, rather than solving it. Corporations naturally favor the status quo, and thus the vast amounts of money would flow to congressional incumbents. According to NPR, Kagan said that when Congress purposely restricted corporate money in campaign finance laws, it “may be the single most self-denying thing that Congress has ever done.”

Instead of promoting the middle class as the foundation of a healthy American society, however, politicians, reckless CEOs and the American people have diverted from our core values. Rather than making a concerted effort to improve and invest in our future, we have gone around flaunting our strength, masking our true problems and consuming to feed our insatiably greedy hunger.

As a result of this whole mess, there is rampant inequality and a troubling future on the horizon that promises significantly worse conditions for our generation.

As the incoming generation, we have an obligation to learn from the errors of the past, which advocated self-indulgence. Instead, we must work to allow equal opportunities for all.

Hopefully, whoever is picked for the Supreme Court will listen to the increasingly angry pleas of the youth.