The White House said the president and first lady Michelle Obama will pay their respects during the day. Late-term Supreme Court nominations have happened under three presidents, according to politifact.com: Republican William Taft, Republican Herbert Hoover and Democrat Lyndon Johnson.
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President Barack Obama made what seemed like political waves on Wednesday, when it became known that he wasn’t going to attend the funeral of Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia. Lisa Murkowski, R-Alaska, went a step further and said she’d support such a move.
Tellingly, the senators didn’t say whether Obama’s nominee should at least get a hearing – just that they’d be justified in refusing an up-or-down vote. In the end, he voted to hear only a handful, according to The Brethren.
Neither McConnell nor Grassley have not yet ruled out a confirmation hearing. “That would essentially be putting the Supreme Court in gridlock for two terms”, said Elizabeth Wydra, president of the liberal Constitutional Accountability Center.
“If POTUS ignores precedent, I believe extraordinary circumstances give the Senate every right to deny the nominee an up or down vote”, Murkowski wrote, using an acronym for the president of the United States.
Obama has challenged Republicans to live up to their avowed adherence to the Constitution and agree to vote on his nominee.
Hatch, who served as the Judiciary Committee’s chairman or its ranking Republican from 1993 through 2004 and continues to sit on the committee, said in an interview that he worries a political spectacle amid a presidential race could be “demeaning” to the nominee, the Senate and the panel’s reputation for conducting fair and serious work. He added: “The American people are going to make them pay if they jerk the president around on this”.
When Scalia passed away on Saturday, Feb. 13, it left the Supreme Court with an empty seat.
Scalia called the ruling in the health care case “pure applesauce”.
“Our intent is to nominate an indisputably qualified individual to fill a vacancy on the Supreme Court”, White House press secretary Josh Earnest said Wednesday.
In a written statement announcing his position, Heller said, “The chances of approving a new nominee are slim, but Nevadans should have a voice in the process”.
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A CBS News poll released Thursday showed 47 percent of Americans want Mr. Obama to name the next justice, while 46 percent said they want to wait until next year. In the past, lawmakers have sometimes informally agreed to halt hearings on lower court nominations during campaign season. But Obama argued that “the Supreme Court’s different”. The majority of the Republican Party is trying to turn this issue into a chess game with the Democratic Party, but it is really a simple process. “It is. If I had to pick somebody to replace me on the Supreme Court, it would be Frank”.
