His baritone voice silenced and his mighty pen relinquished, Scalia will lie in repose all day and into the night so fellow justices, law clerks, Supreme Court employees and Americans who revered or simply respected him can pay homage.
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Earnest again stated that Vice President Biden and his wife will be attending the funeral as representatives of the Administration, adding Biden had “his own personal relationship with Justice Scalia”.
Biden said Obama will instead pick someone who isn’t overtly ideological, and mentioned two justices selected by Republican presidents: Justice Anthony M. Kennedy, considered a swing vote on the court, and retired Justice David H. Souter, who often sided with the court’s liberals.
Scalia’s body will lie in repose in the Supreme Court’s Great Hall on Friday, a day before his funeral service.
The pallbearers then placed the casket on the same wooden platform on which President Abraham Lincoln’s coffin rested in 1865. The 79-year-old jurist was appointed to the court in 1986 by President Ronald Reagan.
President Barack Obama has remained tight-lipped on his strategy for overcoming an intransigent Congress and seeing his Supreme Court nominee confirmed, but his aides and allies have already begun describing in broad contours what they’re looking for in a candidate.
Scalia will be buried at an undisclosed location during a private ceremony.
Spokeswoman Kathy Arberg says the court will stay open an additional hour until 9 p.m.to allow more people to get in.
“I intend to do my job between now and January 20, 2017”, Obama said.
The Senate, whose Republican majority would be unlikely to embrace any selection seen as particularly liberal, must confirm nominees picked for lifetime appointments to the nation’s highest court.
Next week, Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell will meet with the other 53 GOP senators for the first time since Scalia’s death, giving the Republican leadership a chance to build consensus behind their strategy to deny the nominee a chance of even being considered. White House spokesman John Earnest rebuked critics who he said “want to use the funeral of the Supreme Court justice as some sort of political cudgel”.
“Scalia was one of the great Supreme Court justices in history”, Turner said, while standing in line outside the court. Vice President Joe Biden will attend.
A 2007 portrait of Scalia by artist Nelson Shanks was displayed nearby.
Obama said after Scalia died that he planned to nominate someone for the position before the end of his term.
In a departure from tradition, the court’s current and former justices won’t be lining the marble steps outside the court as the casket is carried through the main entrance.
Burial plans have not been announced for Antonin Scalia, who died last weekend at a remote Texas ranch.
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Scalia’s widow, Maureen, whom he married in 1960 following his graduation from Georgetown and Harvard Law School, was present, along with their nine children and several dozen grandchildren.
