Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia found dead

LooseGoose wrote:

tGreenWay wrote:

Is that even allowed? I've never heard of it for the SCOTUS.
And it probably couldn't happen anyway, as ML McConnell would keep the Senate in session, making some junior Senator show up. Or, maybe even more likely, someone like Cruz would insist on being allowed to stay in session so he could grandstand in front of the cams.

Yes it is...last one to do it was Eisenhower.

And now you're right, they're scheduled to be in recess and I doubt McConnell allows it to happen now.

LooseGoose wrote:

Gomer wrote:
What could possibly warrant dragging this on more than 3X longer than the previous longest confirmation?

1st the right of the Senate to reject a nominee is as strong as the right of the President to nominate. Both of those powers stem from elections won. The last 5(!) rejected nominees were Republicans rejected by Democrat controlled Senates. So I'd say those nominees waited longer than 10 months.

GRR Spartan wrote:The GOP might be wise to go with a moderate now.

If Clnton or possibly Sanders would win they couldn't stall for a whole 4 year term. Worse case would be the Democras regaining the Senate with a Democrat as President.

It will be interesting to hear the cause of death. If Scalia's health was an issue why was he traveling alone? I if his health was declining he myth have been hanging n in the hope a GOP nominee would be elected to be the next president.

Travis of the Cosmos wrote:

LooseGoose wrote:

1st the right of the Senate to reject a nominee is as strong as the right of the President to nominate. Both of those powers stem from elections won. The last 5(!) rejected nominees were Republicans rejected by Democrat controlled Senates. So I'd say those nominees waited longer than 10 months.

As far as what would warrant it? Politics. And a HUGE shift of the court - this is realistically more important in the long run than who wins the White House.

Well, I mean, it's been like 120 years since the last time a Democrat president nominated with a Republican Congress. So "5(!)" is really more like 5(.) I just like accurate punctuation goose.

Historically, many Supreme Court nominations made in a President’s final year in office are rejected by the Senate. That started with John Quincy Adams and last occurred to Lyndon B. Johnson.

It is critically important that the Senate hold pro forma sessions, since President Barack Obama would be able to make a recess appointment to the Supreme Court if the Senate goes out of session. Critically, there is a five-day recess this week and a two-week recess currently scheduled for April. There have been twelve such recess appointments to the high court. A recess appointment would last until the end of the Senate’s next session.

Historically, most presidents select a nominee within a week of a Supreme Court vacancy. However, there have been several lengthy vacancies when the Senate refused to play ball with controversial presidents or controversial nominees.

President John Tyler had a particularly difficult time filling vacancies. Smith Thompson died in office December 18, 1943. His replacement, Samuel Nelson, was in office starting February 14, 1845. That’s a vacancy of 424 days. Henry Baldwin died in office April 21, 1844. His replacement, Robert Cooper, was in office starting August 4, 1846. This vacancy lasted 835 days because Tyler could not get the Senate to work with him. During Tyler’s presidency, the Senate rejected nine separate Supreme Court nominations!

Most recently, Abe Fortas resigned May 14, 1969. His replacement, Harry Blackmun, was in office starting June 9, 1970, making the gap just longer than a year.

pulling69 wrote:President Barack Obama will submit a nomination to replace Justice Antonin Scalia on the U.S. Supreme Court, sources told CNN on Saturday night.

Scalia's death in Texas set off an immediate debate about whether Obama should attempt to fill the seat in an election year.

Republican Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell said Obama should wait until the next president comes into office, while top Senate Democrat Harry Reid called for the seat to be filled "right away."

LooseGoose wrote:

Travis of the Cosmos wrote:

Well, I mean, it's been like 120 years since the last time a Democrat president nominated with a Republican Congress. So "5(!)" is really more like 5(.) I just like accurate punctuation goose.

Hush....lol.

There’s Ample Precedent For Rejecting Lame Duck Supreme Court Nominees

Historically, many Supreme Court nominations made in a President’s final year in office are rejected by the Senate. That started with John Quincy Adams and last occurred to Lyndon B. Johnson.

It is critically important that the Senate hold pro forma sessions, since President Barack Obama would be able to make a recess appointment to the Supreme Court if the Senate goes out of session. Critically, there is a five-day recess this week and a two-week recess currently scheduled for April. There have been twelve such recess appointments to the high court. A recess appointment would last until the end of the Senate’s next session.

Historically, most presidents select a nominee within a week of a Supreme Court vacancy.  However, there have been several lengthy vacancies when the Senate refused to play ball with controversial presidents or controversial nominees.

President John Tyler had a particularly difficult time filling vacancies. Smith Thompson died in office December 18, 1943. His replacement, Samuel Nelson, was in office starting February 14, 1845. That’s a vacancy of 424 days. Henry Baldwin died in office April 21, 1844. His replacement, Robert Cooper, was in office starting August 4, 1846. This vacancy lasted 835 days because Tyler could not get the Senate to work with him. During Tyler’s presidency, the Senate rejected nine separate Supreme Court nominations!

Most recently, Abe Fortas resigned May 14, 1969. His replacement, Harry Blackmun, was in office starting June 9, 1970, making the gap just longer than a year.

Turtleneck wrote:Any chance Obama nominates gHost?

pulling69 wrote:

Turtleneck wrote:Any chance Obama nominates gHost?

I wish...his confirmation hearing would be awesome. Imagine some of his posts and threads being brought up on a national stage.

Turtleneck wrote:

pulling69 wrote:
I wish...his confirmation hearing would be awesome. Imagine some of his posts and threads being brought up on a national stage.

I heard there was talk of a Tanfan nomination, but it was decided you have to know what a wheel route is to be a justice.

A gHost confirmation hearing would be awesome.

"Mr. gHost, did you have relations with Diane Sawyer? And did you get a free lunch because you are developmentally challenged or just  mistaken for being challenged?"

Floyd Robertson wrote:I calling for bolley's nomination, an caus voice of reason.

LooseGoose wrote:What's funny is that if any of the parties involved were completely honest they would admit to behaving exactly the same way if the roles were reversed.

Majority leader Reid would be advocating to wait for the next president after Romney.

LooseGoose wrote:What's funny is that if any of the parties involved were completely honest they would admit to behaving exactly the same way if the roles were reversed.  

Majority leader Reid would be advocating to wait for the next president after Romney.  

Travis of the Cosmos wrote:

LooseGoose wrote:What's funny is that if any of the parties involved were completely honest they would admit to behaving exactly the same way if the roles were reversed.  

Majority leader Reid would be advocating to wait for the next president after Romney.  

I don't think anyone said, or even implied, that Democrats wouldn't do the exact same thing.

Note- this is why people think you're a Republican.

pulling69 wrote:President Barack Obama will submit a nomination to replace Justice Antonin Scalia on the U.S. Supreme Court, sources told CNN on Saturday night.

Scalia's death in Texas set off an immediate debate about whether Obama should attempt to fill the seat in an election year.

Republican Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell said Obama should wait until the next president comes into office, while top Senate Democrat Harry Reid called for the seat to be filled "right away."

Watch Out Pylon! wrote:I think Travis killed Scalia because he's a blue lib.

LooseGoose wrote:

Watch Out Pylon! wrote:I think Travis killed Scalia because he's a blue lib.

Until today I didn't know Travis was a murderous son of a bitch.

LooseGoose wrote:

Watch Out Pylon! wrote:I think Travis killed Scalia because he's a blue lib.

Until today I didn't know Travis was a murderous son of a bitch.

He was important because of his intellectual influence. There were and are many legal theories and schools of constitutional interpretation within the world of American conservatism. But Scalia’s combination of brilliance, eloquence and good timing — he was appointed to the court in 1986, a handful of years after the Federalist Society was founded, and with it the conservative legal movement as we know it — ensured that his ideas, originalism in constitutional law and textualism in statutory interpretation, would set the agenda for a serious judicial conservatism and define the worldview that any “living Constitution” liberal needed to wrestle with in order to justify his own position.

This intellectual importance was compounded by the way he strained to be consistent, to rule based on principle rather than on his partisan biases — which made him stand out in an age when justices often seem as purely partisan as any other office holder. Of course there were plenty of cases (“Bush v. Gore!” a liberal might interject here) in which those biases probably did shape the way he ruled. But from flag burning to the rights of the accused to wartime detention, Scalia had a long record of putting originalist principle above a partisan conservatism. And this, too, set an example for his fellow conservatives: The fact that today the court’s right-leaning bloc has far more interesting internal disagreements than the often lock-step-voting liberal wing is itself a testament to the premium its leading intellectual light placed on philosophical rigor and integrity.

As absurd as it often feels to have Anthony Kennedy as the last arbiter of everything, in a way we’ve been weirdly fortunate in the court’s long-running 5-4-with-a-swing-vote split. It’s allowed both halves of our polarized republic to feel somewhat represented on the highest court, to feel as if they have at least a fighting chance in the majority of controversies, to feel as if there’s some legitimacy — not a lot, maybe, but some — to the decisions of our unelected guardians. (As much as liberals may hate the Roberts court for Citizens United, it also gave them same-sex marriage and protected Obamacare; as much as conservatives object to Kennedy’s ruling in Obergefell, they’re grateful for his ruling in Hobby Lobby.)

To have the intellectual godfather of the conservative bloc replaced by a liberal appointee would upset this balance, perhaps irrevocably. As it was for a time — and not a happy time — in the 1960s and 1970s, the court would simply become the Enemy to half the country, a vanguard force pulling the political order to the left.

None of this is entirely new. My mentor, Justice Thurgood Marshall, didn’t die in harness, but I remember the deathwatch all the same. I was serving as one of his law clerks in 1980, the year Ronald Reagan was elected, and on election night, one of the television networks reported that Marshall had decided to quit the court, in order to give Jimmy Carter the opportunity to make an appointment. The report was false, of course, and Marshall was furious. Some in the building speculated that the story had been planted by activists hoping he would get the message and depart, clearing the way for a younger liberal voice -- much as, in recent years, some on the left have openly if cruelly urged Ruth Bader Ginsburg to step down, as though she owes them some special fealty.

Marshall took a similar view. During the last year of his life, I was assisting him with his oral history, and we spent many hours together. One of the many delights of listening to his tales was the generosity of spirit with which he described his opponents. He spoke with warmth of the very justices who were busily chipping away at his legacy.

Nor was his affection reserved for his colleagues. Before becoming a judge, Marshall spent years litigating civil-rights cases, often at great risk to his life. In the course of his travels, he got to know many of the leading segregationists of the age, some quite well. When he talked about them in the oral history, his eyes would glow with affection. They were dead wrong on race, he said, but they weren’t bad people. Across the nation’s greatest moral divide, Marshall respected, and now and then even admired, those who fought him.

That quality didn’t make him unique among his generation. But it’s a talent we’ve largely lost.

Rocinante wrote:Oh Bloomberg thinks liberals are vultures hanging over the aged carcases of supreme court justices. Color me surprised.

Stephen L. Carter, a Bloomberg View columnist, is a professor of law at Yale University. He is the author of 12 books, including "The Emperor of Ocean Park" and "Back Channel." He has a bachelor's degree from Stanford University and a law degree from Yale. He was a clerk to U.S. Supreme Court Justice Thurgood Marshall and for Judge Spottswood W. Robinson III of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit. He lives in Connecticut. He teaches courses on contracts, professional responsibility, ethics in literature, intellectual property, and the law and ethics of war

LooseGoose wrote:Then Majority Leader Harry Reid delayed a vote on Miguel Estrada for the DC Court of Appeals for 2 years until the clock ran out on GWB's Presidency, Estrada never got an up or down vote. He also delayed a vote on Priscilla Owen for 4 years, she was 1st nominated in '01 and didn't get a vote until '05 when the R's had enough seats to vote for cloture. Both sides play this game and always have so a delay will be nothing new.

LooseGoose wrote:

Watch Out Pylon! wrote:I think Travis killed Scalia because he's a blue lib.

Until today I didn't know Travis was a murderous blue son of a bitch.

GRR Spartan wrote:

LooseGoose wrote:Then Majority Leader Harry Reid delayed a vote on Miguel Estrada for the DC Court of Appeals for 2 years until the clock ran out on GWB's Presidency, Estrada never got an up or down vote. He also delayed a vote on Priscilla Owen for 4 years, she was 1st nominated in '01 and didn't get a vote until '05 when the R's had enough seats to vote for cloture. Both sides play this game and always have so a delay will be nothing new.

Equating a US Appeals appointment to a Supreme Court Justice is a reach.

When did a sitting President lose his job to nominate a Supreme Court Justice in the last 12-13 months of a term? Should ad first term President be denied nominating a Supreme Court Justice in the 4th year of their first term because they may lose a re-election bid?

Justice Kennedy was confirmed in Feb'88 97-0 by a US Senate with the Democrats holding a 55-45 majority. No where can I find where the then junior Senator from Kentucky held a press conference urging his fellow Senators to refuse to vote on lame duck President Reagan's nomination.

LooseGoose wrote:

GRR Spartan wrote:

Equating a US Appeals appointment to a Supreme Court Justice is a reach.

When did a sitting President lose his job to nominate a Supreme Court Justice in the last 12-13 months of a term? Should ad first term President be denied nominating a Supreme Court Justice in the 4th year of their first term because they may lose a re-election bid?

Justice Kennedy was confirmed in Feb'88 97-0 by a US Senate with the Democrats holding a 55-45 majority. No where can I find where the then junior Senator from Kentucky held a press conference urging his fellow Senators to refuse to vote on lame duck President Reagan's nomination.

The DC court of appeals is the highest court next to the Supreme Court so I don't see it as an enormous reach. And President Obama isn't going to be denied nominating a Justice. He can do so at any time, then the Senate can do as it wants. Your argument that he can't be denied his right to nominate works just as well on their right to confirm.

As far as Kennedy goes, yes he was confirmed in February of 88 but he was nominated in November of 87 so not quite the same timing.

DWags wrote:

LooseGoose wrote:

The DC court of appeals is the highest court next to the Supreme Court so I don't see it as an enormous reach. And President Obama isn't going to be denied nominating a Justice. He can do so at any time, then the Senate can do as it wants. Your argument that he can't be denied his right to nominate works just as well on their right to confirm.

As far as Kennedy goes, yes he was confirmed in February of 88 but he was nominated in November of 87 so not quite the same timing.

Obama has some options here. I even think he can appoint a temporary or fill in. If any case has been voted on up till now, can't the minority also ask for a revote at this point? I can't remdember shit from political science 35 years ago. But it's not just having an 8 justice vote, or throwing out the cases that have already been tried and decided. It's going to be interesting.