Judge Antonin Scalia found dead

[turkeyfoot]

This is very bad news.

For the man, and for the nation.

http://www.mysanantonio.com/news/us-world/article/Senior-Associate-Justice-Antonin-Scalia-found-6828930.php

We've been 5-4 on a number of very important decisions, and he's part of the five (often writing the opinion).

Zero must not be given another socialist appointment (under any circumstances).

[Guyau]

.

If President Obama appointed this one, would you favor her?

.

[Selene]

No.

[william.scherk]

From Stephen's link:

Her libertarian political beliefs have been expressed in her speeches, most notably one she delivered to the Federalist Society at the University of Chicago Law School in 2000. Brown's speech mentioned Ayn Rand and lamented the triumph of "the collectivist impulse", in which capitalism receives "contemptuous tolerance but only for its capacity to feed the insatiable maw of socialism." She argued that "where government moves in, community retreats, civil society disintegrates, and our ability to control our own destiny atrophies," and suggests that the ultimate result for the United States has been a "debased, debauched culture which finds moral depravity entertaining and virtue contemptible".

Her remarks gained particular attention, however, for her thesis that the 1937 court decisions upholding minimum-wage laws and New Deal programs marked "the triumph of our own socialist revolution", the culmination of "a particularly skewed view of human nature" that could be "traced from the Enlightenment, through the Terror, to Marx and Engels, to the Revolutions of 1917 and 1937."

I am sure Brown would find some fans here if nominated by a President Trump ...  

Reading the Wikipedia article on her own struggle to have her nomination ratified by Senate, it doesn't seem like Obama could speed a nomination faster than the Brown nomination under George W Bush. That took two years, and the first attempt lapsed with the proroguing of Congress, if I understood correctly. So, Obama could nominate even a GOP dream candidate, but see that idea die long before you guys inaugurate a new Executive to replace him.  Can anyone see a quicker conclusion when Obama sends a name up the hill? (It looks like Brown has been on the GOP radar for elevation going on ten solid years.) 

I guess it remains to be seen, but I think the Supremes may have a pretty inconclusive set of judgments ahead until the ninth seat is occupied, without the clarity and weight of Scalia.  What happens in a four-four deadlock? Sounds like Congress at its glacial, seized-up worst.

 

I am reminded, as perhaps Stephen is, of Scalia's dissent in Lawrence v Texas.  He saw the writing on the wall.  Striking down sodomy laws would lead to gay marriage. Not, perhaps, by a straight path, but hey.

Under a Trump administration, it looks like he would seek to nominate a person who would return (by magic means?) gay marriage to the states. I actually doubt that Trump could raise a proper sigh over gay marriage, personally, but politics makes people say strange pandering things in the heat of the moment.  He might mean what he says, but he would run into a wall of voodoo if he chose poorly or made it a centrepiece of his admin, IMO.

What no Trump or Scalia II should be able to do is take away Stephen's wedded bliss. I hope.  I can't imagine a way to overturn the Supremes that doesn't make hash of American ideals and freedoms, but what do I know?

 

Edited February 14, 2016 by william.scherk

[turkeyfoot]

First Ive heard of her. That choice does seem far fetched and unlikely. 

[Selene]

She is consistently proposed by conservatives and libertarians as a promising Justice.

She has made some quality decisions and she is visually a PC poster child.

I have read two of her decisions and one of them was on banning "semi-auto rifles."

She certainly merits consideration.

A...