The death of Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia quickly turned to political hay, sparking a debate whether the nomination should fall to President Barack Obama or his successor.
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Within an hour of the announcement that Scalia died while vacationing in Texas, U.S. Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell declared that “this vacancy should not be filled until we have a new president”.
“I believe the President should not move forward and I think we ought to let the next president of the United States decide who is going to run that Supreme Court with a vote by the people of the United States of America”, said Kasich. “There will be plenty of time for me to do so, and for the Senate to fulfill its responsibility” to confirm a nominee.
Rubio also praised Scalia’s efforts to defend religious freedom and immediately turned up pressure on Obama to leave the appointment of Scalia to his successor.
Republican’s Cruz, Rubio and Carson all called for Scalia’s replacement to be named by the next president, who will be inaugurated January 20, 2017.
Scalia’s sudden death could serve as a reminder of the consequences of elections.
The development, however, also raises the stakes for the eight Democratic and Republican presidential candidates racing for the White House, forcing them to define their so-called “litmus test” for the high court.
Republicans may be motivated to hedge their bets depending on who emerges as the nominees from both parties and the political atmosphere. The fate of the Supreme Court and the possibility that the next President could get the chance to nominate at least two or three Justices and shift the ideological balance of the court was already a key election issue even before Scalia’s death.
One potential candidate to replace Scalia is Sri Srinivasan, a 48-year-old federal appeals judge in Washington who would be the court’s first justice of Asian ancestry. Sanders (I-Vt.) “My thoughts and prayers are with his family and his colleagues on the court who mourn his passing”.
Obama said the Senate should have enough time for a fair hearing and timely vote. “But the fact of the matter is, the Supreme Court, obviously, is a very important part of our governmental system, and when our constitution was put in place, the average age of death was under 50”.
While Senate Democrats in 2013 triggered the so-called nuclear option – dropping the thresholds to end filibusters for executive branch nominations and most judicial nominations to a simple majority – they kept the threshold at 60 votes for Supreme Court picks. Justices are considering a major challenge to public sector unions, a race-conscious admissions plan at the University of Texas, the first big abortion case since 2007, challenges to voting rights, the Affordable Care Act’s contraceptive mandate and a challenge to President Barack Obama’s immigration actions.
Both sides are bracing for a hard fight. “And partisan competition and antagonisms were far lower then compared to their heights of today”.
Scalia was the court’s most influential conservative. Still, it would be unprecedented to reject nominees for just under a year (See John Tyler, who had 5 rejected and took 15 months to fill a vacancy).
“What is less than zero?”
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Throughout Obama’s seven years in the White House, the high court has been considered split 4-to-4 between strict constructionist (or conservative) justices and those jurists who embrace a more liberal interpretation of the Constitution.
