The Supreme Court without Justice Scalia

I was reading a book Saturday afternoon when there was an alert on my phone from Huffington Post. It said that Justice Scalia had died. I was to put it mildly in shock over it. I immediately turned on the TV to see if I could get any further details about it.

There were very sketchy reports as to when this had happened. It was of course confirmed he had died. I texted several people to let them know. They hadn’t heard that it had happened. I think the general consensus was holly shit. What happens now.

Scalia’s death was shocking but what happened next was even more shocking. Scalia’s body was barely cold and the Republicans come along with no one will be considered for the vacancy until after the presidential election. As Senator McConnel said:

“The American people‎ should have a voice in the selection of their next Supreme Court Justice,” McConnell (R-Ky.) said in a statement. “Therefore, this vacancy should not be filled until we have a new president.”

Except the American people have spoken when they reelected President Obama.

Shows just how extreme the Republicans have become.

I’ll have some further thoughts about this but I’m going to take just a moment on Justice Scalia himself.

I have to say I can’t think of single of his decisions I would agree with. I found his opinions to be rather extreme and well for lack of a better way to describe it dangerous. My feelings changed some when I saw him and Justice Ginsberg interviewed by Marvin Kalb for the Kalb report. It was truly an amazing even to go to.

Here’s a link to the full post. 

Here's a little of what I said at the time:

Scalia is a very charming, very smart, very funny guy. Some self deprecating  humor. But boy oh boy are his decisions wrong.

But what is clear is the respect that Scalia and Ginsburg have for each other. Ginsburg even calling Scalia by his nick name Nino. And in this time of hyper partisanship, it was nice to see two people with such divergent views on the law get along. As Scalia put it: If you cannot disagree with your colleagues on the law without taking it personally, you ought to get another day job.