President Obama has promised to uphold his “constitutional responsibility” to nominate a replacement for Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia, a conservative stalwart who died over the weekend. “If the Democrats want to replace Scalia, they need to win the election, but I don’t think the American people want a court that will strip our religious liberties”.
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President Barack Obama has pledged a nomination “in due time”.
Scalia’s death leaves the court evenly divided between liberal and conservative justices.
The presidential election just got real.
Administration officials will likely hash out strategy over the next few days. Guevara declined to request an autopsy and his family reportedly told the funeral home where his body was transferred that they did not want one performed by the state. Republicans, however, have said a president in his final year in office should not make an appointment that could shift the balance of the court for decades.
These Republicans are terrified of opposition from their right-they’ll think about the general election, and what those voters might think of the decision to leave the court deadlocked on the most important cases, later.
Speaking in Rancho Mirage, California, White House spokesman Eric Schultz said the Senate’s “duties are ironclad” when it comes to voting on presidential nominees.
Schultz said that “doesn’t include exceptions for election years”.
Bluster it may be, but it’s coming from a lot of Senate Republicans-from presidential candidates like Ted Cruz and Marco Rubio, from Judiciary Committee Chair Chuck Grassley, from Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, and even from a growing list of vulnerable Republican incumbents up for re-election this November.
Pillard was a controversial nominee appointed after the Democratic majority enforced a rule change to expedite consideration of appointments – the so-called nuclear option.
In the past, Obama has advocated justices who blend legal smarts with personal empathy, a combination he cited during the selection processes for both Sonia Sotomayor and Elena Kagan.
“The Constitution doesn’t say that you have to do this in a certain time constraint”, he told CNN.
Democrats are counting on the pressure on Republican senators to force McConnell to allow a nominee to move forward, though the majority leader has shown no signs of relenting since his statement within hours of Scalia’s death on Saturday that the vacancy should not be filled until a new president is sworn in.
That path would include Judge Sri Srinivasan, 48, of the D.C. Circuit. At that hearing, he was praised by Sen.
While some may be pressured to join Democrats in calling for a confirmation vote depending on who Obama nominates, Bonjean also saw a potential upside for those Republicans. Another would be Judge Paul Watford, an African American who sits on the on the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals.
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A partisan conflict over the Supreme Court about 30 years ago could hold some lessons for today’s political battle of the court. A Supreme Court spokeswoman could not immediately confirm that Monahan had examined Scalia, and Monahan did not return a phone message left for him at his Capitol office Monday.
