Scalia, J.

While I profoundly disagree with Justice Scalia's notions of originalism, as a lawyer (and now very minor Judge) myself, I cannot but acknowledge his contributions to confrontation clause jurisprudence. The country is better off on balance, I believe, for his efforts. May he rest in peace.

 

This is indeed shocking news since he seemed to be in good health. Justice Scalia was the yin to the yang of Justices Ginsburg and Kennedy. He was a true constitutionalist and a needed conservative voice in our highest court. A brilliant legal mind. And he will be sorely missed.

 

Funny guy who was well-liked by his colleagues. Brilliant mind, too. Sorry to see him go this way.

The President and the Senate should fulfill their respective Constitutional duties.

 

President Obama does have an obligation to nominate someone per his Constitutional duties. But the Senate is under no obligation to confirm any of his nominees. The Senate’s duty is to advise and consent. The Senate is advising right now. They are advising that a lame duck president president in an election year is not going to be permitted to tip the balance of the Supreme Court.

 

The problem is that anyone that Obama will nominate will see Constitutional protections where they don't exist (abortion) and not see them where they do (Second Amendment).

As Scalia said, "It says what it says".

 

Yes. I would have preferred he left the SCOTUS on his own terms, not fate's.

 

Nonsense. It isn't "advising" anything. It is rejecting its Constitutional duty. They're not objecting to a nominee; they're objecting to ANY nominee. They might have the right to do that, but it doesn't make it right, or justifiable.

The President will nominate someone for the position. Then we'll see what the GOP-controlled Senate does.

 

The SCOTUS already determined the Constitutional protection for abortion. That's not Obama's construct. See Roe v. Wade.

 

Nonsense on your "nonsense," sir. The Senate does not have a duty to accept any nominee or to allow the President to permanently alter the balance of the court. There is precedent for this...

In 1968, when Republicans were a Senate minority possessing only the power of filibuster, Everett Dirksen prevented Lyndon Johnson from appointing Associate Justice Abe Fortas to replace retiring Chief Justice Earl Warren and then appointing Homer Thornbury to take Fortas's seat as an associate justice.

Senate Minority Leader Dirksen did not run the Senate or control any Senate committees. Republicans, in fact, held only 36 Senate seats, and several of these were leftists. Yet Dirksen was able to cobble together enough senators to prevent Johnson from filling a Supreme Court office during a heated election year. The left, of course, squealed and yelled like stuck pigs, but it lost, because Senate Republicans and a handful of Senate Democrats stood firm.

If Everett Dirksen, who was only a moderate conservative holding a very weak hand, was able to thwart LBJ, who had been Senate majority leader before he was vice president and who knew all the ropes and all the tricks of the Senate, then Senate Majority Leader McConnell clearly has the power to do the same.

In fact, all McConnell and the Republican leadership have to do is to decline to consider any nominee appointed by Obama. State clearly that the Senate is exercising its constitutional power and, unlike Obama who presumes powers he does not have, that the power to confirm or deny a presidential appointment is at the heart of the Senate's control of the Executive Branch.

 

And if both parties take that view we could end up NEVER replacing Supreme Court justices...but Republicans don't care if the government works or not. Witness how they dragged their feet on lower court appointments. If Reed hadn't taken the "nuclear" option on them it would have been worse. If they refuse to do their duty on this I hope it'll be a cold day in hell before a Republican gets to fill a vacancy.

 

Which was the beginning of an overreaching Supreme Court that started legislating from the bench, which isn't their job. I've read the Constitution from beginning to end, many times, and if there's any reference to abortion in the document, I must be supremely stupid to have missed it.

However, the right to bear arms is there, plain as day, and the Founding Fathers thought it was so important, they made it #2 after free speech. Yet, it's a foregone conclusion that whoever Obama nominates will have selective vision, and try to twist the 2A into something that it doesn't say.

 

You must have selective memory. Was it the Republicans who did a hatchet job on Robert Bork, one of the most brilliant legal minds in the country?

Or how about the attempted hatchet job on Clarence Thomas? He was eventually confirmed because he took the liberal's favorite cop-out, racism, and threw it back in their faces ("high-tech lynching").

 

Well, I always believed Anita Hill, so I view the confirmation of Thomas as an argument against your position...he was confirmed when I belive the Senate should have turned him down. I personally don't see any comparison between opposition to individual nominees and the wholesale refusal to consider confirmation of lower court judges.In this case, the Republicans are not even bothering to wait and judge any nominee on their merits, they have simply stated, in advance, that partisan politics will decide that an Obama nominee will not be confirmed. THAT is unprecedented, and if practiced by both sides would completely break the system.

 

I believed Anita too but I think I'm right when I say that the move to stop the Bork appointment was what started this whole mess of refusing to confirm nominations.

 

You can claim it's true, but the significant number of confirmed nominees (from Presidents of both parties) since then argues against it.

 

No it isn't. And no, it won't.

The Democrats have already done it.

The Internet is amazing. If you search hard enough, more often then not you'll find what you're looking for. Digging through the volumes of history compiled over the lifetime of man, one had to go back to ancient times to find proof of an appointment held up by a political party for political reasons and political purposes.

The ancient times of 2003.

Meet Miguel Estrada. A very talented legal mind who had been nominated by President George W. Bush in May of 2001 to serve on the US Court of Appeals in the District of Columbia.

Democrats had nothing but disdain for Estrada, a Honduran immigrant who would have been the first Hispanic to sit on the Court. So, they filibustered his nomination for two years.

Two. Years.

Eventually, Estrada withdrew his name from consideration, as the need to get a job and support his family became paramount.