Justice Scalia dead: Supreme Court vacancy, news and updates

When Donald Trump names his nominee for the Supreme Court on Tuesday night, judicial conservatives will evaluate his choice according to one simple rule: No Souters.

The 1990 Supreme Court appointment of David Souter is remembered by conservatives as a massive missed opportunity. William Brennan, who despite being picked by Dwight Eisenhower was perhaps the single most liberal justice in the history of the Supreme Court, was retiring, and George H.W. Bush had an opportunity to replace him with a reliable conservative. Conservatives had been burned by the Senate’s rejection of ardent originalist Robert Bork when Ronald Reagan had nominated him three years earlier, and didn’t want a squish like Anthony Kennedy (who wound up getting the seat intended for Bork as a compromise pick), or another Republican-appointed liberal like John Paul Stevens or Harry Blackmun.

A Senate Democrat announced Monday that he will filibuster Donald Trump’s nominee to the Supreme Court — setting up what would be only the second time in modern history that a nominee to the Court has been filibustered.

“We will use every lever in our power to stop this,” Oregon Sen. Jeff Merkley told Politico. “A very large number of my colleagues will be opposed.”

A case that had the potential to weaken public sector unions across the United States ended with a somewhat unexpected victory for unions on Tuesday, as the Supreme Court divided 4-4 on the question of requiring nonmembers to pay a fee to the public sector union that negotiates the collective bargain agreement that covers both members and nonmembers.

The split vote in Friedrichs v. California Teachers Association means a lower court verdict in favor of the union stands.

Ten days before Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia unexpectedly passed away in February, Chief Justice John Roberts delivered some harsh criticism about the Court’s confirmation process.

He said the Senate should only assess whether nominees to the high court are sufficiently qualified and leave politics out of their consideration, according to the New York Times’s Adam Liptak.

But another is his age: Garland, the chief judge of the DC Circuit Court of Appeals, is 63. He is the oldest Supreme Court nominee to be named since 1971, when President Richard Nixon nominated Lewis Powell, who was then 64.

Presidents typically try to appoint younger judges, since those judges hold lifetime appointments. Court picks represent a major way that presidents can leave an ideological imprint on the country through the interpretation of the Constitution — so it makes sense that they’d want to appoint judges who can be alive to do that work as long as possible.

President Barack Obama called his Supreme Court choice, Merrick Garland, “a consensus nominee” in a speech in the Rose Garden on Wednesday morning.

Republicans have promised to oppose any justice nominated by Obama before the presidential election. But several conservatives are on record as praising Garland, which will make it at least more politically difficult for Republicans to refuse to confirm him.

President Barack Obama provoked the ire of conservatives this week after the White House announced the president would not be attending Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia’s funeral Saturday.

Obama and first lady Michelle Obama will pay their respects on Friday, when Scalia’s body is scheduled to lie in repose in the Great Hall of the Supreme Court building. Vice President Joe Biden is planning to attend the funeral in the Basilica of the National Shrine of the Immaculate Conception Saturday. Scalia died at a private Texas ranch last Saturday.

Former Supreme Court Justice Sandra Day O’Connor, a Ronald Reagan appointee to the bench, came out sharply against Republican leaders in the political fight that has erupted since the death of Justice Antonin Scalia.

O’Connor said that President Barack Obama should be permitted to name a replacement for the late justice. Her comments, made in an interview with Fox 10 Phoenix, were a rebuke to Republicans who have said they wouldn’t be willing to entertain an Obama nominee to replace Scalia’s seat on the high court.

We’re already seeing shortlists for who could replace Justice Antonin Scalia on the Supreme Court after his death February 13. And most of those names, as well as previous nominees, have something in common: They’re between the ages of 50 and 60.

There is no age requirement to be a Supreme Court justice, as opposed to the US House, Senate, or presidency. But given the time it takes to build up a résumé worthy of a Supreme Court nomination, it seems a lawyer is unlikely to be considered for the highest court before his or her late 40s.

Justice Antonin Scalia’s sudden death over the weekend, replete with delays, odd calls, and misreporting, was ripe for conspiracy theory enthusiasts to seize on.

Scalia, 79, was pronounced dead at a remote Texas ranch where he had gone for a hunting retreat. Here’s what we know about his death, what we don’t, and why it’s become so controversial.

It was only a few hours after news surfaced of Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia’s death that Republicans in the Senate had vowed to reject any replacement nominated by President Barack Obama.

“The American people‎ should have a voice in the selection of their next Supreme Court Justice,” said Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell in a statement. “Therefore, this vacancy should not be filled until we have a new President.”

Democrats would like the person who replaces Justice Antonin Scalia on the Supreme Court to be a liberal, so they want to see President Obama’s choice for the seat confirmed. Republicans, conversely, want another conservative on the Supreme Court, so they like Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell’s vow to block anyone Obama chooses.

The result has been dueling talking points about historical precedents. A leading Republican, Sen. Chuck Grassley (R-IA), pointed to a “standard practice over the last 80 years to not confirm Supreme Court nominees during a presidential election year.” For their part, Democrats have pointed out that more than a dozen Supreme Court justices have been confirmed by the Senate during election years.

If Republican senators refuse a Supreme Court nominee to replace Antonin Scalia until President Barack Obama — or even a Democrat in general — is out of the White House, America could be looking at a historic length in a Supreme Court vacancy.

This great chart, from Sean McMinn at Roll Call, tells the story:

Following Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia’s death, Republicans are arguing that President Barack Obama should not appoint someone to the Supreme Court during an election year — largely out of fear that Obama will use his last year in office to appoint a liberal judge to replace the conservative Scalia.

But Obama said he’s moving forward with a nominee anyway. And it turns out that nominating a justice during an election year is not totally unprecedented, as this chart by graphics designer David Mendoza shows:

From one angle, Senate Republicans just made a massive mistake. They could have simply waited for President Obama to nominate a replacement for Justice Scalia, drawn out the confirmation process, and then rejected the nominee on ideological grounds months from now.

But Senate Republicans didn’t do that. Instead, Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell immediately announced he wouldn’t consider any nominee from Obama no matter how qualified, how conservative, or how beloved. What could’ve been a debate over the noxious liberalism of Obama’s choice has now become a debate over the reflexive obstructionism of Senate Republicans.

If you’ve ever believed that people can disagree passionately about politics and still respect and care for each other as friends, the friendship of Justice Antonin Scalia and Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg was a comfort and an inspiration.

He was the Supreme Court’s most outspoken conservative; she is its most outspoken liberal. But their friendship became famous, not just because of its odd-couple unexpectedness but because their mutual respect and affection for each other was obviously genuine.

One final note: After the Supreme Court issued its stay last week, I saw a number of analyses hinting that maybe the Clean Power Plan wasn’t that critical after all, since many utilities were moving toward clean energy anyway. That seemed wrong to me. Or at least incomplete.

It’s true that there are myriad other forces presently pushing the United States toward cleaner energy. The natural gas boom is crushing coal power. Congress just renewed key tax credits for wind and solar through 2020. Many states, like California and New York, are already working on plans to green their grids. Even if the Clean Power Plan fell, these dynamics would remain in place. Coal power would still be dying.

Sen. Elizabeth Warren said Sunday that Republicans who don’t want President Barack Obama to nominate a successor to Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia risk threatening “our democracy itself.”

In a short, sharply worded statement, Warren said she couldn’t find the section of the Constitution that tells presidents not to nominate justices “when there’s a year left in the term of a Democratic president.” Scalia died suddenly on Saturday, opening a vacancy on the court.

After Justice Antonin Scalia died on Saturday, Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell said that the Supreme Court vacancy should not be filled until after the presidential election. Most of the GOP presidential candidates agreed with that position during the CBS debate.

The candidates’ responses differed in details — Jeb Bush, for example, said that he’d be open to a “consensus candidate” before predicting that Obama wouldn’t offer one — but none seemed to believe that an Obama nominee should ultimately wind up on the high court.

One of the biggest political arguments of 2016 will be whether the Senate should confirm President Obama’s nominee to the Supreme Court — or delay until 2017 so that the next president can fill the seat. Already, partisans on both sides are readying their arguments about why it would — or wouldn’t — be unprecedented for the Senate to run out the clock on Obama’s presidency.

A key part of the conservative argument will be that it’s unprecedented for the president to nominate a candidate during an election year. “It’s been standard practice over the last 80 years to not confirm Supreme Court nominees during a presidential election year,” said Sen. Chuck Grassley (R-IA) on Saturday.

President Barack Obama said he will nominate a Supreme Court justice after the sudden death of Antonin Scalia on Saturday opened a vacancy on the bench.

Republicans have said the Supreme Court seat should not be filled until after the upcoming presidential election. Obama’s national address on Saturday was primarily about Scalia’s life and legal career, but he also promised to fulfill his “constitutional responsibilities” and nominate a successor to Scalia.

Justice Antonin Scalia has died. The death is already causing a bit of a political crisis as Democrats and Republicans argue over how the justice’s successor will be named to the Court, particularly in an election year.

Behind all of this political wrangling is one simple fact: Scalia was very conservative. He consistently wrote opinions that drew the ire of liberals, while conservatives praised his incredible ability — as perhaps the Court’s strongest writer — to eloquently explain their legal positions.

The fight over Justice Antonin Scalia’s successor on the Supreme Court is going to be massively more politicized than any nomination fight we’ve seen in decades. It may even be the most acrimonious and high-stakes nomination fight ever.

For the past quarter-century, the Court has been narrowly divided between five conservatives and four liberals. The close split has produced a long series of decisions in which a five-justice majority adopted conservative interpretations of the law over the objections of the court’s four liberals.

Saturday night before the Republican presidential debate, Hillary Clinton offered a statement on the death of Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia, arguing strongly that President Obama should appoint a successor and the Senate should consider the nominee.

She says conservative senators arguing otherwise “dishonor our Constitution”:

Justice Antonin Scalia’s death is a test for the American political system — a test it’s unlikely to pass.

The test is simple. Can divided government actually govern, given today’s more polarized parties? In the past, it could. In 1988, a presidential election year, a Democratic Senate unanimously approved President Ronald Reagan’s nomination of Anthony Kennedy to the Supreme Court. The Senate wasn’t passive; it had previously rejected Reagan’s initial nominee, Robert Bork, and Reagan’s second choice, Douglas Ginsburg, dropped out of the running. However, it ultimately did its job — even amidst an election and divided party control of the government.