After Antonin Scalia (1936-2016), Turmoil In The Court

photograph of the justices, cropped to show Justice Scalia (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

At the beginning of Saturday night's Republican debate in South Carolina, the six remaining presidential candidates put down their pitchforks long enough to pay their respects to Supreme Court justice Antonin Scalia, who just hours before had died at 79.  After imploring the necessity of keeping a conservative majority on the Court, the candidates resumed their regularly scheduled train wreck of a debate.

Scalia, who was nominated by President Ronald Reagan in 1986, was one of those justices whose controversial actions and decisions in defending the Constitution made him beloved among his conservative supporters while being extremely disliked by his detractors.  He helped move the Court to the right, sometimes to the point of alienating other conservatives with his judicial opinions.

The death of Scalia leaves the Court with eight justices, at least temporarily.  Because of this, several decisions this term may either end up deadlocked or postponed until a new justice is confirmed.

This could take awhile.  President Barack Obama has said he would make his choice soon, making it the third time he has performed this task, which has previously resulted in confirmations for Sonia Sotomayor and Elena Kagan.  But this is an election year, and Republicans would rather that the next President decide the next justice.  It might happen anyway, given the hard feelings between Obama and the GOP-dominated Senate which must approve his nominee.

While you were watching the squawking and finger-pointing among the GOP candidates, it should have occured to you that one of these guys (along with Democratic candidates Bernie Sanders and Hillary Clinton) will have the power over the next four years to nominate their own Supreme Court justice.  If not a replacement for Antonin Scalia, then it's for whoever else steps down along the line.  Then the new President will have his or her own ideological battle with the Senate before they turn thumbs up or down on the nominee.  After that, it's anyone's guess as to how the new justice will rule once that person takes a seat on the Supreme Court bench.

In other words:  America, choose wisely.