As Scalia is remembered Friday, talk is likely to also focus across the street, to the Capitol, where the question hovers over whether Senate Republicans will successfully block Obama from winning a third appointment to the High Court.
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The eight remaining justices convened in the Great Hall, along with Scalia’s family members, for a half-hour private ceremony that began when his casket arrived shortly before 9:30 a.m. Eight Supreme Court police officers carried the casket up the steps, which were lined with current and former court staffers.
The Rev. Paul Scalia, the justice’s son and a Catholic priest, said traditional prayers.
Doors opened at 10:30 Friday morning until 8pm, with visitors including students, local residents, and members of Congress saying farewell. His death Saturday sparked an ongoing political debate over how and when a replacement justice should be named.
In recent years, the sitting president has often – but not always – attended funerals of justices who died during his term.
Nearly 100 of Scalia’s former law clerks attended, and they will take turns standing watch over the casket throughout the day, along with an honor guard.
Aside from the fact that the American people exercised their voices when they re-elected President Obama in 2012 by over 5 million votes, Sen.
Chief Justice William H. Rehnquist, who died in 2005, was the last justice to lie in repose in the hall.
Unless the Scalia family let it be known that it didn’t wish Obama to attend – which seems inconceivable – the president’s decision makes no sense.
Supreme Court workers wait outside the court in Washington for the arrival of the body of the late Supreme Court justice.
The pallbearers then placed the casket on the same wooden platform on which President Abraham Lincoln’s coffin rested in 1865.
GOP presidential hopeful Ted Cruz said he would interrupt his campaign ahead of Saturday night’s SC primary to attend the Mass. The Texas senator has been among those urging the Senate not to consider replacing Scalia until after the election.
President Obama and first lady Michelle Obama are set to pay their respects at the court at some point today.
Mixing humor into the homily, the younger Scalia has said his father sometimes forgot their names or mixed them up but he excused him because there were nine of them.
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Scalia’s funeral is slated to take place Saturday, starting around 11 a.m. EST.
