Main Paineframe posted:

Remember the government shutdowns? They'll absolutely try - though rather than admitting it's because they don't like the president, they'll spin some bullshit about how it's unprecedented for a president in to appoint a justice in an election year and there's no way an outgoing president's nomination could be considered legitimate. In fact, the candidates already pushed that argument during last night's debate, even though it's not true. For example, Kennedy was confirmed in Feb 1988.

Bedshaped posted:

Did he die from being a fatty? Do they perform an autopsy?

Main Paineframe posted:

Remember the government shutdowns? They'll absolutely try - though rather than admitting it's because they don't like the president, they'll spin some bullshit about how it's unprecedented for a president in to appoint a justice in an election year and there's no way an outgoing president's nomination could be considered legitimate. In fact, the candidates already pushed that argument during last night's debate, even though it's not true. For example, Kennedy was confirmed in Feb 1988.

HootTheOwl posted:

In a 5-4 decision the supreme coroners ruled him dead of natural causes.

Monohydrate posted:

Good loving riddance. I hope Obama can nominate a gay black judge to the bench

Your Dunkle Sans posted:

Sen. Mitch McConnell in 2005 defending the President's right to nominate Supreme Court justices:

Evil Fluffy posted:

How long until this is quoted back in him on the floor of the Senate?

HappyHippo posted:

I don't think the senate Republicans will be able to stall out for that long. The pressure to "do their jobs" and least go through the motions with Obama's nominee will be high. I think the plan will be to stall for a while, then drag out the hearings, and then reject the candidate, probably with a filibuster occurring in there somewhere (I'm guessing Cruz). How reasonable they appear during this whole process will depend on who Obama nominates. Alternatively they might strike a deal with him, appointing his nominee in exchange for some concession.

HappyHippo posted:

I don't think the senate Republicans will be able to stall out for that long. The pressure to "do their jobs" and least go through the motions with Obama's nominee will be high. I think the plan will be to stall for a while, then drag out the hearings, and then reject the candidate, probably with a filibuster occurring in there somewhere (I'm guessing Cruz). How reasonable they appear during this whole process will depend on who Obama nominates. Alternatively they might strike a deal with him, appointing his nominee in exchange for some concession.

Al! posted:

I'm sure there will be some tea party leaning congressmen who will refuse to vote for ANYTHING Obama wants to do until a full investigation is called into the circumstances surrounding Scalia's death.

Josh Lyman posted:

They skipped the autopsy.

Al! posted:

I'm sure there will be some tea party leaning congressmen who will refuse to vote for ANYTHING Obama wants to do until a full investigation is called into the circumstances surrounding Scalia's death.

Mr Jaunts posted:

In case anyone was wondering, Scalia died of a heart attack.

Munkeymon posted:

I'm afraid the playwright has a point here

https://twitter.com/dick_nixon/status/698893139071864832

Munkeymon posted:

I'm afraid the playwright has a point here

https://twitter.com/dick_nixon/status/698893139071864832

electoral-vote.com posted:

The data can be parsed in many different ways, but here are a few salient observations:

47 of the 112 justices in Supreme Court history were submitted in the last 18 months of a presidential term.

Of those 47, 28 were confirmed, six were withdrawn, three declined the offer, two were rejected, and for eight no decision was made.

Just over half of those 47 were placed into nomination by a president whose lame duck status was official.

For official lame ducks, it is 11 confirmations, four withdrawals, three declines, one rejection, and five where no decision was made.

The average length of time for a decision to be made is 37 days; the longest a nominee has languished is 261 days. There are 342 days left in Barack Obama's term.

Late-term appointments were vastly more common in the 19th century than they are today. In part, this is because justices live and serve longer now, so there is less turnover. And in part it is because the Court's increased importance over time has caused more justices to strategically "time" their resignations and retirements; rarely does a seat come open in the third/fourth year of a president's term unless a justice dies unexpectedly.

The upshot is that there is no "tradition" of lame duck presidents withholding their Supreme Court nominations in order to "give the voters a chance to weigh in." The Court has business to do, the President has a role in making sure that business gets conducted, and no chief executive—including Ronald Reagan—has declined to fulfill their responsibilities because their time in office was short. Grassley, Rubio, and Cruz zoomed in on "80 years," because only two vacancies have occurred in the last 18 months of a president's term during that time (one each for LBJ and Reagan). Two instances does not a "tradition" make, however, and in any event, both of those presidents made a nomination.

There is some precedent for filibustering a nominee (or failing to take action, which was the 19th century equivalent). However, in each case where a nominee lingered for 100 days or more, the issue was not constitutional or legal but instead 100% political. Namely:

Both John Tyler and Millard Fillmore were Democrats-turned-Whigs who assumed the presidency on the death of the incumbent (William Henry Harrison and Zachary Taylor, respectively). They weren't Whiggish enough for the Whigs and were considered apostates by the Democrats in Congress, so their nominees were punished. In fact, Tyler's failures (he only got one of six nominees approved) gave us the longest vacancy in Supreme Court history, at 27 months.

Woodrow Wilson's nomination of Louis Brandeis outraged conservatives in Congress, who deemed the justice-to-be "too radical." There was also some amount of anti-Semitism driving opposition to the appointment, though it was eventually approved.

LBJ's nomination of Abe Fortas to the chief justiceship (and Homer Thornberry to fill the associate seat that would have been vacated by Fortas) is the case that the GOP is currently hitching its wagon to; Cruz specifically mentioned it during the debate. In Fortas' case, Congressional Republicans were angry about the Great Society, Democrats about the Vietnam War, and both sides felt the nominee was too closely connected to the President, so they refused confirmation.

Certainly, it is entirely possible for Obama's nominee to be held up for the rest of his term. More than a dozen of his appointments to lower courts have already waited for a year or more. But the President's opponents cannot rest on "custom" or "tradition" or "precedent" as their reason. Sooner or later, as the president's choice waits longer than any appointee ever has, it will be obvious that the delay is pure politics. And at that point, the question will be whether the calculus adds up for the GOP.

Josh Lyman posted:

Actually, they were planning to nominate a super WASP and ended up nominating Commander Adama a Sotomayor.

Hollismason posted:

This nomination is going to be the hill that Cruz or Rubio choose to die on so that'll be pretty great.

White Genocide posted:

Is it true that judge scalia once argued for the constitutionality of putting an innocent man to death?

Munkeymon posted:

Well now we know it was murder: someone had to have put that thing in his chest.

White Genocide posted:

Is it true that judge scalia once argued for the constitutionality of putting an innocent man to death?

quote:

...Later, I learned that Scalia and Kagan were friends, though I suspect she would have been as surprised as I was at the brazenness of Scalia's suggestion.

Each was a graduate of Harvard Law School and had taught at the University of Chicago Law School, though in different eras. They were of different generations, he the son of an Italian immigrant, she a Jew from New York City's left-leaning West Side. But they shared an intellectual rigor and a robust sense of humor. And if Scalia could not have a philosophical ally in the next court appointee, he had hoped, at least, for one with the heft to give him a good, honest fight...

But when another vacancy arose a year later with the retirement of Justice John Paul Stevens, Obama did nominate Kagan, whose friendship with Scalia would grow in the years to come, even as they differed, sometimes sharply, on issues before them.

During her confirmation meetings with senators, Kagan had vowed to go hunting to allay their concerns about her cultural awareness on the issue of guns. When she joined the court, she asked her friend, Scalia, to take her. The two, who occasionally shot intellectual darts at each other on paper, became regular, if unlikely, hunting partners...

White Genocide posted:

Is it true that judge scalia once argued for the constitutionality of putting an innocent man to death?

Sinners Sandwich posted:

It's 2016 can't we do this all with computers now? The 9th judge is usually the one that deadlocks it right? Just have an acting A.I.

Quorum posted:

No, no, we don't want Associate Justice Rubio.

Absurd Alhazred posted:

Sinners Sandwich did say AI.

FAUXTON posted:

Associate Iustice.

Worked for the Romans, just how Scalia would have liked it.

Nckdictator posted:

Bizarre mental image of the day.



http://edition.cnn.com/2016/02/14/opinions/david-axelrod-surprise-request-from-justice-scalia/index.html

Gazpacho posted: