As Republican presidential candidates invoke Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia’s legacy, all insisting that his suddenly vacant seat shouldn’t be filled until a new president is in place, it is helpful to ask: What would Scalia do? He joined the court in 1986 and was its longest-serving justice.
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Scalia’s casket will be on public view from 10:30 a.m. until 8 p.m. Vice President Joe Biden and his wife, Jill, were to attend today’s funeral Mass at the Basilica of the National Shrine of the Immaculate Conception in Washington. The site where he’ll be buried is still unknown. If Obama is able to nominate a justice to the bench, this new Supreme Court will be heralded in history books for centuries to come for having the bravery to start ushering in a wave of social acceptance. Known as a linchpin of the court’s conservative wing, Scalia was noted for his recognizable – and often colorful – style of writing when he wrote court opinions.
The GOP-led Senate is not expected to approve any appointment by Obama, who said after Scalia’s death he would make a consideration in “time due”.
Friends and court staff also watched the ceremony as Scalia’s former law clerks stood vigil by their former boss in a tradition most recently observed after the 2005 death of former Chief Justice William Rehnquist.
The casket is resting in the court’s Great Hall on the Lincoln Catafalque, the platform on which President Abraham Lincoln’s coffin rested in the Capitol rotunda in 1865. President Barack Obama and First Lady Michelle Obama plan to pay their respects later in the day. “There are, as you know, a large number of lawyers who work at the White House, and they’ve produced a significant quantity of information and I suspect the president will be dedicating a significant portion of his weekend digging into that information”.
Now Obama himself is being accused of ill manners and worse for skipping Scalia’s funeral on February 20. The republic can survive a year without a ninth Supreme Court justice.
“Well, you just have to pick the best person you can under the circumstances as the appointing authority must do, and one that we care about as a nation and as a people”, she said. And when Reid invoked the nuclear option to push through most nominees on simple majority votes in 2013, Democrats kept the 60-vote threshold for Supreme Court justices – a nod to the party’s liberal supporters who want the ability to block conservative nominees.
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Nelson said the Supreme Court can decide to hold the votes that will result in a tie or they can hold off on reviewing the bills until Scalia is replaced.
