The next president will enter office with a potentially pivotal Supreme Court seat vacant. It’s an issue that may pale next to such world-historically important questions as Hillary Clinton’s email management, but it’s still very important. If Clinton captures the White House but Republicans retain the Senate, it is extremely likely that the Supreme Court blockade the GOP started in March will persist for four more years. Just as congressional Republicans have reconciled themselves to Donald Trump, they have already convinced themselves that the only principled course is to deny Clinton the ability to nominate anybody to the Supreme Court. The result would be the hobbling of an entire branch of government, which is just one example of how the chaos of Trumpism will live on even if he loses the election on November 8.

There are scenarios in which we could see the confirmation of a ninth justice to fill the seat left vacant by Antonin Scalia’s death. If Trump pulls off an upset victory, it would almost certainly come with a Republican Senate. This would lead to generic Republican nominees being confirmed to the federal courts. Some conservatives have been skeptical that Trump would reliably nominate conservative judges because of his less-than-robust commitment, historically speaking, to social conservatism. But such doubts are almost certainly misplaced. Even if Trump secretly wanted to appoint moderate judges, it’s not clear where he would find them (David Souter, one of the last of his kind, is not going to come out of retirement). And as George W. Bush’s failed nomination of Harriet Miers showed, Senate Republicans would reject any Supreme Court or crucial circuit court nominee who doesn’t have a demonstrable record of conservatism.

Trump filling Scalia’s seat would not transform the Court. Anthony Kennedy would remain the median vote. But if Trump also replaced Kennedy, Ruth Bader Ginsburg, or Stephen Breyer, the Court would quickly produce outcomes that would hurtle American constitutionalism back toward the Gilded Age.

If Hillary Clinton wins and Democrats take the Senate, she will almost certainly be able to get a mainstream liberal nominee confirmed to replace Scalia. As of now, the filibuster power remains in place for Supreme Court nominations. But the Supreme Court filibuster would not survive further Republican obstructionism. Outgoing Senate Minority Leader Harry Reid has made it clear that the filibuster for Supreme Court nominations is dead. Clinton’s ticket-mate Tim Kaine, who could potentially cast the deciding vote for a Supreme Court nomination if the Senate ends up 50-50, has followed suit. The only real question in this scenario is whether Clinton would effectively reward Republican obstructionism by re-nominating Merrick Garland, President Barack Obama’s choice to fill the seat, or take the more desirable course of nominating someone younger and more liberal on civil liberties.

The messy scenario involves a President Hillary Clinton facing off against a Republican Senate. Many pundits assume that point-blank refusing to fill the vacant Supreme Court seat will be politically impossible for Republicans. These pundits are, however, probably wrong. Everything about the way Senate Republicans have operated under the leadership of Majority Leader Mitch McConnell suggests that keeping Scalia’s seat open is exactly what the GOP will do. The GOP’s drift from traditional norms of governance has only been exacerbated by Trump, who has stoked the anti-establishment sentiments roiling the Republican base and made it virtually impossible for Republican legislators to work with Democrats on anything.