Story highlights Richard L. Hasen: The Supreme Court is scheduled to hear cases that will impact voting rights and campaign contributions

Confirming Judge Neil Gorsuch as a justice would swing the votes toward troubling decisions, he writes

Richard L. Hasen is Chancellor's Professor of Law and Political Science at UC Irvine School of Law and author of "Plutocrats United: Campaign Money, the Supreme Court, and the Distortion of American Elections." The opinions expressed in this commentary are his.

(CNN) It's no big deal, the thinking goes, that the Senate seems likely to confirm Judge Neil Gorsuch for the Supreme Court, as President Trump urged in his speech Tuesday night.

The President encouraged this line of thought -- that elevating the judge from the United States Court of Appeals for the 10th Circuit "fills [Justice Antonin] Scalia's seat" with another conservative and just returns the court to a five-justice conservative majority that it had before Scalia passed away last February. Nothing to see here, supposedly; the real action will come when swing Justice Anthony Kennedy or one of the liberal justices leaves, moving the court further to the right. Democrats should hold their fire until it counts.

Richard L. Hasen

Unfortunately, this approach obscures the fact that keeping the steady course with a conservative replacement for Scalia will be bad enough across a range of topics important to many Americans, from environmental protection to immigration law to the ability of labor unions to collect dues from their members. Even though Gorsuch is not a Scalia clone, things are likely to be pretty bad on these key issues, because Gorsuch is likely to vote like Scalia, and the court with Scalia already was moving in a very bad direction.

Consider how things will likely get worse in two areas that are the focus of my work, campaign finance and voting rights.

The controversial 2010 Supreme Court decision in Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission held that corporations have a First Amendment right to spend unlimited funds independently supporting or opposing candidates for office. Fortunately, the case concerned only spending limits, and it didn't say anything about contribution limits. The Supreme Court has generally been much more willing to allow contribution limits because the court has said they pose a greater danger of corruption.