Justice Antonin Scalia, the longest-serving member of the current Supreme Court and an intellectual leader of the conservative legal movement, died Saturday, and his death set off an immediate political battle about the future of the court and its national role.
Scalia, 79, was found dead at a hunting resort in Texas after he did not appear for breakfast, law enforcement officials said. A cause of death was not immediately reported.
President Obama, who disagreed with Scalia’s jurisprudence, nevertheless praised him as “a larger-than-life presence on the bench” and a “brilliant legal mind [who] influenced a generation of judges, lawyers and students, and profoundly shaped the legal landscape.”
Obama said he would nominate a successor, even though the Senate’s Republican leadership and its presidential candidates said an election-year confirmation was out of the question.
What? Why is an election-year-confirmation out of the question? On whose watch did Scalia die? I sincerely hope that the Republicans will not attempt trickery, obstruction and chicanery to block what is President Obama’s constitutional duty. November is 9 months away and the inauguration is 11 months away. That is plenty of time to replace Justice Scalia, if everyone is honest and does his or her job.
Funny how that Constitution is so freaking important…until it isn’t.
It’s Obama’s job to appoint a new Supreme Court justice in a timely fashion. Why is it that if he nominated Jesus Christ, I think that the Senate Republicans would block the nomination?
Justice Kennedy was nominated and confirmed only after Bork got “borked” and Ginsburg was withdrawn for the same seat. Kennedy was the third choice and we see that he has worked out well for Libs on some of the biggest cases of our day. Prior to Bork, confirmation of SCOTUS nominees was a mundane and business-like affair. Ted Kennedy and Biden changed all that. Obama’s nominee should be extended the same level of courtesy and civility that Bork and Clarence Thomas received.
Clarence Thomas has some major issues. I guess he helps out by pillow talk with his wife who runs some sort of tea party organization. He sure doesn’t do anything but sit there like a lug on the SCOTUS.
I just love it when people who self-describe as “conservatives” or even “Republicans” hold up the Chuck Schumers of the world as their guiding lights. It fortifies my views that political philosophies have become pretty much arbitrary labeling. Shirts-and-Skins, Odds-and-Evens. Principles have nothing to do with it. And, just to be fair, we have self-described “Democrats” and “Liberals” relying on Mitch McConnell’s counter-argument to Schumer – that there is no tradition or rule that prevents a president from nominating, and the Senate acting on a last year court nomination.
It’s all more or less dumbed down Kabuki for petulant children.
Snicker. Chuck Schumer is the boogey man I guess.
http://legalinsurrection.com/2016/02/branco-cartoon-an-original/
That’s probably true unless you are female, black, Indian, gay…any other you can suggest. A Originist has a problem from the get go….the Constitution was written by upper class white men. No one else had any power. None at all.
If you stick to exactly what those framers said, then you continue to keep the rest of us without any power at all.
I have a problem with that.
So showing an image of Scalia dressed as a KKK member is simply disagreeing with his positions… got it.
https://www.moonhowlings.net/index.php/2015/12/10/justice-scalia-when-does-spoken-bigotry-end/
I think making fun of someone’s political positions in what is an obvious political spoof doesn’t ruin his reputation.
Saying he is a cross-dressing bank robber who holds up drug lords, steals their drugs and shoots up ruins the reputation.
Get a grip. Of course its simply disagreeing with his positions.
This writer has a good idea. So, of course, no one on the GOP side will even hear about it, much less implement it.
https://ricochet.com/how-republicans-can-win-the-supreme-court-media-battle/
@Scout
@ Scout,
Thank You for that well articulated response to my questions. I hold pretty much the same view as you in these key areas.
Ninja Stars and Switchblades are not items in “common use” within the military, and are not deemed suitable for the common defense. I don’t have an issue with states regulating those items in accordance with their respective views. “Arms” means firearms, as these are issued to the common soldier and the accouterments that go along with them. If it ever comes down to my having to defend myself with Nun-chuks, Shurikan Stars, Bo-Staff, Poison darts, etc, I don’t think I’d want to go on living in that world. Too Mad-Max.
So, in essence, the 2nd is …I don’t want to say propped up..but grounded in the notion that everyone is a common soldier?
Moon,
That is correct.
“I ask, sir, what is the militia? It is the whole people, except for a few public officials.”
— George Mason, in Debates in Virginia Convention on Ratification of the Constitution, Elliot, Vol. 3, June 16, 1788″
The framers had a distrust of standing armies, and this country has always had a militia pedigree. Not necessarily what the media today defines as a “militia”, rather, the general populous has a civic duty to protect itself when faced with both internal and external threats, whether the threat is directed at the individual, as in the case of say a robbery, or society at large, as in a time of war. At the outset of the civil war, the earliest units were state organized (the framers called them “select” militia), and unorganized (Grand) militia, that were called up for service by both governments.
@Scout
And I just hate it when some people “seem” to be helpless in ascertaining where something is going — as in using the past words of two ultra-liberals to ambush their current efforts at justifying proposed action of the exact opposite. Actually, they both helped our cause by providing this ammo. Unusual. I am giving both of them a sort of back-handed compliment by adopting their prior philosophies on SCOTUS nominations affecting court balance. Me ever agree with Schumer and Obama? Well, golly, sometimes things happen. Fortunes of war. Chuckle, chuckle.
I choose to approach a current battle by recognizing the battleground as it is in reality, not by wishful thinking about a political Shangri La which has not existed since the last term of G. Washington. And, as for the possibility that Obama might appoint a “moderate,” he nixed that very quickly and emphatically in the California press conference……unless you all start claiming that the Kagans and Sotomayors of this world are “moderates.”
Cheers.
Hmmmm. I have been involved in a lot of death investigations, almost all overseas in conjunction with foreign police and prosecutors. I seldom found myself unable to access an autopsy report, even when the cause of death was rather obviously a terrorist action. The absence of such a report usually occurred in Third World investigations. But now I can’t seem to find one for that highly publicized death case in Texas. Mystifying. Sort of Third Worldish, one might say.
Is this a conspiracy theory at work?
The man was 80 years old. Human beings don’t live forever.
You used to pay me to be very suspicious. He may have been near 80 but he was certainly no Joe Six-Pack. He was controversial in a controversial age and outside his usual milieu sans wife and sans security protection. Real sleuths look for an autopsy report…and a toxicology report — to be reasonably sure. He isn’t carried off to the funeral services in my book until the coroner can show you the results of his own investigation. But I hear it’s already too late. This whole thing looks to me like it was scripted for an Oliver Stone film. Or maybe a game of “Clue,” as some wag recently suggested.
Shhhh..don’t tell Oliver Stone. I am sure he already has found someone to write the script.
I can agree with that, blogmistress. But, of course, I would never call dear Chuck a “vile drek” or anything of that nature.
Snicker.
I don’t even know what a vile drek is. Remember that I got an F in pop culture.
Here is one of the best statements on Scalia I’ve ever seen. Well, actually on anyone. Please pardon me if it is too long, but I copied it verbatim off of the Book of Face.
When I was in law school, a Supreme Court clerkship was the Holy Grail. For me, it was clerking for Justice Antonin Scalia. Now that I’m a partner in a law firm that serves the notoriously progressive entertainment industry, the fact that I once clerked for Scalia often elicits looks of surprise from those sitting across from me, who ask if I’m the functional equivalent of a unicorn — a conservative in Los Angeles — a place that Scalia had amusingly warned me would “melt my brain.” I tell them, no, I’m politically liberal, but that my time working for the justice was one of the defining experiences of my life.
I’d heard all through law school that Scalia always hired one liberal clerk, though my sense is that this practice had waned in recent years. In fact, the process of applying for a Supreme Court clerkship entails applying to all nine justices — the notion being that justices choose clerks and not the other way around. But Justice Scalia was the person for whom I most wanted to work, not because we were ideologically aligned, but because we were not. It had to do with the way he was so deeply vilified — both personally, and as a jurist — by so many of my classmates. He was discussed in almost cartoonish fashion, conjuring images of twirled mustaches and barely-concealed devil horns. It was a time, just after Bush v. Gore and 9/11, when battle lines had been drawn, and it was politically correct to reject wholesale any belief that was not your own.
That approach made me uncomfortable, and I found myself becoming more and more interested in Justice Scalia’s work, eager to understand how someone so clearly brilliant could see the world so differently than I did. It’s why I took the job.
And, in some ways, the job is a strange one. To assist in the writing of opinions, clerks have to get inside a justice’s mind to think as they do and to write as they would. My role was to facilitate his, and sometimes that was easier than others. In one case I worked on writing a dissent — the position held by a minority of the court — with which I fundamentally disagreed on a moral level, but found, as I wrote, that I was drawn to Scalia’s reasoning; his emphasis on precedent, strict textual construction and judicial restraint. While I remain bound not to discuss details of the cases I worked on, I can say that Scalia’s arguments in that case conveyed a clarity not found in the majority’s opinion, which relied on legal and verbal gymnastics in order to reach the desired outcome. His approach had a logic and simplicity that resonated with me, despite my politics. I found myself able to get inside his mind in that moment, to sublimate my own views, and write confidently in his voice. I was proud when my co-clerk told me that Scalia had called it a “knock out.”
There were other days, though, where I found myself sitting on Scalia’s worn leather couch, looking up at Leroy — the mounted elk’s head that dominated the justice’s chambers — wondering how both Leroy and I had gotten there, as Scalia and my three conservative co-clerks all found common ground that I simply could not access. “You really think that?” and “That can’t be right,” were refrains I heard often in response to bench memos I prepared in advance of oral argument.
I’ll admit that I went back and forth between playing the part of contrarian and simply trying to give the justice the recommendations he was looking for. There were times I was pleased when he noted my penchant for disagreement. Once, when my co-clerk gave him a draft of an important opinion, Scalia nodded toward me, smiled and said, “Let’s give it to Mikey,” quoting the old Life cereal commercial, “She doesn’t like anything.” In those moments, I felt I had license to challenge Justice Scalia, and my arguments were always met with energetic debate and his eagerness to prove me wrong. At other times I simply wanted his approval, and for him to tell me that I was finally thinking “right” — which he meant with its full double-entendre.
I missed the mark a few times when I made assumptions about what Justice Scalia would think, based on his political leanings. In one particular criminal case, I tried to anticipate his reaction and gave him the analysis I thought he wanted. But when I suggested he might want to follow the more conventionally conservative line of thinking, he looked at me incredulously and said, “We can’t do that.” There was another case, where we were tasked with writing the majority opinion, when I saw him struggle and ultimately change his mind after realizing that the text of the statute would not support the position he initially wanted to take. That was the one time the Justice — who was very respectful of personal time and valued his own — called me on a weekend and asked me to come into chambers. As we worked through the case together, the power went out in our wing of the Court. Rather than taking a break, we moved our chairs and books into the hallway, using the natural light that came through the courtyard. This prompted Justice David Souter (who was famously averse to using modern technology, including, seemingly, the light bulb) to poke fun at our inability to read in dim light.
If there was a true surprise during my year clerking for Scalia, it was how little reference he made to political outcomes. What he cared about was the law, and where the words on the page took him. More than any one opinion, this will be his lasting contribution to legal thought. Whatever our beliefs, he forced lawyers and scholars to engage on his terms — textual analysis and original meaning. He forced us all to acknowledge that words cannot mean anything we want them to mean; that we have to impose a degree of discipline on our thinking. A discipline I value to this day.
Justice Scalia treated me with enormous respect and always seemed to value my opinion — a heady experience for someone just a year out of law school. I never felt as though he looked at me differently than my conservative counterparts; his trust felt implicit, which is, perhaps, why I struggled so much between wanting to challenge him and wanting to please. He was also, hands down, the smartest person I’ve ever known. What would take me weeks to understand would take him minutes to process. I’ll never forget my first experience handing him an opinion and watching him, in a matter of minutes, type a few lines into his typewriter (yes, a typewriter, even in 2004), and instantly cut to the heart of the issue in a way that I’d simply been unable to do. When I read his new draft, I realized that I’d tried too hard to bridge the difference between his opinion and that of another justice in order to hold our majority. His changes strengthened the argument but also, I feared, risked putting us in the dissent. But Justice Scalia didn’t compromise his principles, even on the smallest issues.
He knew his own mind, and taught me the importance of knowing my own.
Tara Kole is a partner in the law firm of Gang, Tyre, Ramer & Brown, Inc. and a lecturer at the University of Southern California Gould School of Law.
Interesting article. Thank you for sharing it, Cargo.
My problem with original intent hangs on the fact that those founders were a very small subset of the population nowadays. They were all white middle class men. Those were the only people who had any power whatsoever.
Women, minorities, slaves, had no power. In some cases, they couldn’t own property and they absolutely could not vote. There was no political voice for them.
So…to fall back on original intent is dangerous simply because it excludes the very people who often need the protection of the Supreme Court.
There are few moments in a presidency where one can truely claim to not be completely ideological and partisan and this is one of those moments. President Obama could and should attend this funeral but he isn’t and it’s a damn he has chosen not to.
What a missed opportunity. He not only attended but even eulogized a once “Grand Kleagle” of the KKK but can’t attend the funeral of a sitting Supreme Court justice?
Disappointing… But not unexpected
Constant barrage of criticism from you …..what you failed to say is that VP and Mrs. Biden will attend. Obama will pay his respects at the Supreme Court.
The family of Justice Scalia feels it is best also. Obama knows that he would provide a distraction under the circumstances. Let’s move on. Most of us have cranked it up a few notches and have cast aside our personal feelings to honor someone, in death, who spent over 3 decades of public service on the Supreme Court.
Surely you can make a similar gesture, if only for a while.
You are such a partisan animal….
Grand Kleagle? I am assuming you mean Senator Byrd, when he was 20? He wasn’t a Grand anything. I think you probably need to read some history and go over into West Virginia in some of those little tight knit towns to understand the KKK phenomena. It really was the only way to break into politics– in some cases even get a job in the south in some places. Byrd was young. The point is, he didn’t stay a KKK member. He matured. He spoke out against that “albatross.” If you have to scrape that much to denigrate Obama or Byrd, maybe you don’t have much. BTW, Byrd some some sort of Imperial Cyclops.
Good that Obama eulogized Byrd. They both served in the Senate. Little different situation. Obama also didnt go to Paris after those terrorists attacks.
You just want to pick and its obvious. Remember that people do evolve. There is stuff about me that would probably also shock you.
Maybe I will spill some day. [wink wink]
Oh, oh!
@MoonHowler
I didn’t mention Biden because I was talking about a missed opportunity for the President. The only thing I said was that it was disappointing he is not going, that makes me an animal?
It makes you a perpetual complainer about the Prez. I don’t care whether he goes or not. He is paying his respects in other ways.
Biden often serves as Obama’s surrogate, as it were.
President Obama was quite respectful and gracious in his remarks about Justice Scalia. I’m not sure why attending or not attending the funeral service at the Shrine, as opposed to going to the Supreme Court where the Justice will lie in repose, is the test of anything. We might want to check to see how many presidents have attended how many Associate Supreme Court Justices’ funerals over the last two or three decades to get a sense of whether not attending is some major departure from tradition. I doubt it.
@MoonHowler
Because there a lot to complain about. 🙂
Hi pot, I’m kettle.
I don’t complain about the president, regardless of who it is on a continual basis.
Black cookware matters.
Snicker! I just ordered some in purple. Sigh….Vertical pot.
@MoonHowler
And yet, since original intent and textual analysis also includes all the amendments, that is all we CAN go on, because, otherwise, we are just making it up.
I am more of a Breyer type…you know, living Constitution. I am not satisfied to say well…we just won’t change because the framers were all affluent white males.
That is a good way to justify never having to change at all.