Scalia’s death sets off battle over court’s future
WASHINGTON — The death of Justice Antonin Scalia on Saturday, the longest-serving member of the current U.S. Supreme Court and an intellectual leader of the conservative legal movement, set off a political battle about the future of the court and its national role.
Scalia, 79, was found dead, apparently from a heart attack, at a hunting resort in Texas after he didn’t appear for breakfast, law enforcement officials said.
President Barack 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.
Ted Cruz, who styles himself as the most conservatively pure among the Republican presidential candidates, insisted Sunday Republicans would delay or block any Obama appointment to the court.
“We ought to make the 2016 election a referendum on the Supreme Court,” Cruz said. “I cannot wait to stand on that debate stage with Hillary Clinton or Bernie Sanders and talk about what the Supreme Court will look like, depending on who wins.”
As Cruz well knows, there is no issue that so animates the Republican base as appointments to the judicial bench — most notably the Supreme Court.
Many conservatives have never forgiven then-President George H.W. Bush for appointing David Souter to the court, only to see Souter turn into a less-than-ideal conservative pick.
George W. Bush’s 2005 nomination of Harriet Miers was scuttled by conservatives who believed her past record demonstrated a lack of fealty to their principles.
And Scalia’s sudden death casts a cloud of uncertainty over a term filled with some of the most controversial issues facing the nation: abortion, affirmative action, the rights of religious objectors to the contraceptive mandate in the Affordable Care Act, and the president’s powers on immigration and deportation.
An eight-member court could split on all of those issues.
Liberal Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg, soon to be 83, is the oldest member of the court, while Justice Anthony Kennedy is the same age as Scalia.
The jurist’s death leaves the court with three consistent conservatives — Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr. and Justices Clarence Thomas and Samuel A. Alito Jr. — and Kennedy, like Scalia, is a Ronald Reagan appointee but one who often sides with the court’s liberals on social issues, such as same-sex marriage.
The court has four consistent liberals: Ginsburg plus Justices Stephen G. Breyer, Sonia Sotomayor and Elena Kagan.
Despite their sharp ideological differences, the justices nevertheless often proclaim their personal affinity for one another, and it seemed especially true regarding Scalia.
Although the fate of Scalia’s successor seems likely to consume political Washington, the outcome of the many controversies will be complicated by an eight-member court. If the court ties in deciding a case, the decision of the appeals court remains in place, without setting a nationwide precedent.
Although Scalia was a polarizing figure, reaction to his death brought accolades even from those who disagreed vehemently with his view of the law.