Thousands bid Scalia farewell
Solemn day
Bidding farewell to their longtime colleague, the eight remaining Supreme Court justices joined family members, former law clerks and members of the public Friday in paying their respects to Antonin Scalia in a tradition-laden, solemn day at the marble courthouse atop Capitol Hill. The Rev Paul Scalia, the justice’s son and a Catholic priest, said traditional prayers at a private ceremony before thousands of people filed through the court’s Great Hall, where Scalia’s casket lay on a funeral bier first used after President Abraham Lincoln’s assassination.
“You have called your servant Antonin out of this world. Release him from the bonds of sin and welcome him into your presence,” the sixth of the justice’s nine children said.
Outside the court, meanwhile, a makeshift memorial was set up featuring jars of applesauce, a pile of fortune cookies and paper bags, items that figured in the outspoken conservative Scalia’s sharp dissents in recent cases.
Visited
President Barack Obama and First Lady Michelle Obama visited the court Friday afternoon, bowing their heads near Scalia’s casket and pausing in front of a portrait of the justices. During their brief stop at the court, the Obamas were greeted by Chief Justice John Roberts and met with another son of Scalia, Army Lt Col Matthew Scalia, and his family. Vice President Joe Biden and his wife, Jill, were to attend Saturday’s funeral Massachusetts.
On Friday, 98 former law clerks to Scalia lined the Supreme Court’s steps as a police honor guard carried the casket into the building beneath the iconic words “Equal Justice Under Law” just after 9:30 am on a cold, overcast morning.
The justices stood near the casket in the same order in which they will sit on a reconfigured bench following Scalia’s death last week in Texas. Chief Justice John Roberts was between Justices Anthony Kennedy, the longest-serving member of the current court, and Clarence Thomas.
A 2007 portrait of Scalia by artist Nelson Shanks was displayed nearby. In it, the justice is shown surrounded by images representing important moments and influences in his life, including a framed wedding photograph of his wife, Maureen. The extended Scalia family gathered around the widow inside the court.
Scalia’s clerks also took 30-minute turns standing near the casket in groups of four, and planned to do so through the night until his body is taken from the court for his funeral on Saturday.
Replacements
Among those passing through the Great Hall were members of the federal appeals court on which Scalia served before joining the Supreme Court, including two judges mentioned as possible replacements. Judges Sri Srinivasan and Patricia Millett of the US Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit paused briefly before Scalia’s casket and portrait.
More than 3,000 people had passed by the casket as of late afternoon and court officials added an extra hour to accommodate the long lines that stretched more than three blocks in the early evening. At one point, the wait topped 3ó hours, mainly because the public was not allowed in for a time because of the Obamas’ visit.
Visitors passed near the collection of flowers and goods people left to remember Scalia and some of his sharply worded comments. Scalia had called Roberts’ opinion for the court in last year’s health care case “pure applesauce.” He compared Kennedy’s majority opinion declaring the right of same-sex couples to marry to the “mystical aphorisms of the fortune cookie” and said he would hide his head in a paper bag if he ever joined such an opinion.
Also: WASHINGTON:
President Barack Obama this weekend will begin thumbing through resumes for a potential successor to conservative Supreme Court icon Antonin Scalia, aides said on Friday.
The White House said Obama’s legal advisors have drawn up biographies of possible justices, along with assorted briefs, opinions and other reading material.
“The president’s team, over the course of this week, has spent a lot of time preparing materials for the president’s review and I would expect, over the weekend, that the president will begin to dig into the materials,” said White House spokesman Josh Earnest.