The unexpected death of Justice Scalia has dominated the news all afternoon. Most observers agree that the Republican Senate is not likely to appoint any Justice nominated by President Obama. They will wait to see who is elected president in November.
Scalia’s death may have a decisive effect on the Friedrichs vs. CTA case. The plaintiffs in the case argued that teachers should not be required to pay union dues, even as they enjoy the benefits negotiated by the union. Observers predicted that Justice Scalia would be the swing vote. In the past, he had written an opinion against “free riders,” workers who collect benefits without paying for them. On the other, he might have voted in favor of weakening the unions. No one could predict which way he might go.
Thus, because of Justice Scalia’s death, the Friedrichs case could end in a 4-4 deadlock, leaving the current laws unchanged.
Diane Ravitch's blog 
The longest it has ever taken to appoint a justice to fill a vacancy on the Supreme Court is 125 days. Barack Obama still has well over 300 days in office. If the Republicans create another constitutional crisis due to their inability to uphold the US Constitution over partisan politics then we may have far worse things to worry about than education cases. Revolutions have been fought over lesser evils.
It’s not unconstitutional for the Senate to reject a SCOTUS nominee.
To go over 125 days is not a constitutional crisis…..just a new record. Bet on the republicans setting that record.
The only other possibility is Obama making a deal with Republicans where he agrees to put up a “moderate” (which means conservative as all hell to those of us whose mental political spectrums remain somewhat reasonable) in return for them confirming.
While Obama may be is “F-them” mode, which is good, he is still conscious of shoring up some legacy….and Im sure he doesn’t want to be the sitting President for the record-setting Supreme Court nomination filibuster.
Beyond that, in regards to Friedrichs, Scalia’s opinion may already be written or written enough that his staff can finish it. It’s not like they actually make up their minds in June. Not exactly sure how this would work, but lets not assume right away that Friedrichs is now in the “hopeful” column. Lets maybe be tentatively hopeful that we may eventually have some tentative hope for the case’s outcome.
Without Scalia, the vote will be a four to four draw. Anything Scalia wrote prior to his death will be a moot point.
I disagree. Denying the sitting president the constitutional right to appoint a successor is a constitutional crisis, just like holding up the budget process and brining the country to the brink of insolvency.
There are already many right-wingers (think Cliven Bundy’s followers) who believe our Constitution is being broached. At some point the people will respond to the extremely unpopular Congress and its refusal to conduct the people’s business under the law and the Constitution.
What will ultimately start the fires of revolution may remain a mystery but stonewalling a legitimate nominee and holding up the important and crucial business of the Supreme Court for partisan reasons is a potential tinderbox for many.
No, 125 days is apparently the longest it has taken to dispose of a nomination, either with confirmation or rejection.
Back when John Tyler was President, the senate rejected 9 of his nominees, leaving one vacancy for over 400 days and another for over 800 days.
The key here, though, is those nominations came to a VOTE with 125 days.
“Constitutional crisis”? That is a little overly dramatic. The nation can “survive” with 8 Supreme Court Justices indefinitely. (You could call it a constitutional crisis that the Constitution does not give the Supreme Court the power of judicial review. They decided they had that power themselves)
We’ve had a Constitutional crisis ever since it became clear that justices’ political views could matter.
While I often felt this Justice was on the wrong side of the issues, he was a colorful character.
What comes next? At least with Scalia you usually knew where he stood. The future is certainly a mystery.
Tonight it is being offered by Repubs that they someone like Orrin Hatch. Now that is scary. But maybe Obama will offer Joe Biden who would be hard for the Right Wingers to defeat.
Great thought on Biden. But after Kerry’s swiftboating and Trump disparaging McCain’s POW service, these far right GOP guys are capable of anything.
Orrin Hatch IS scary. He’s also 80, older than Scalia, so I doubt that his name will come up. He’s a blight on Utah, I can tell you that.
Wouldn’t a pro tem justice be appointed? Not sure how the federal Supreme Court works but in Washington State, a pro tem is appointed in the absence of a justice. Maybe the case mentioned has already been heard by the Supreme Court. If that is the case, I assume a pro tem would not be appointed because the opinion process is already in motion.
There’s no such thing as a pro tempore justice in SCOTUS. It’s just vacant until it can be filled, which may turn out to be forever, at this rate.
Or did he already vote and write an opinion?
Obama should nominate and again expose GOP obstructionism. It will remind voters of how Republicans operated in the open prior Ryan’s appointment.
The vacancy demonstrates the biggest issue establishment Republicans face. They are a fading party of the past holding power through minority rule on SCOTUS, gerrymandering, voter suppression, and dark money. The vacuum is filled by Trumps and Cruzes (a plural which interestingly spellchecked to “crazies”)..
It doesn’t matter what his opinions were, even if they were written out, they do not count now he has passed away. And a four-four Supreme Court decision is as if no decision had been made.
Ok. I was not sure since oral arguments were already held on Friedrich’s. But wouldn’t it be ironic Hillary is elected then Obama nominated.
I doubt the average voter cares much about the Supreme Court. Don’t get your hopes up.
Scalia was no friend of public education, unions, women’s rights, or church-state separation.
Nobody Obama puts up (or Clinton) will be friendly to public education. That’s a sure thing.
I’ve abandoned hope for the establishment Democratic Party to ever get square and good with public education. They have been won over by the reformers arguments just as thoroughly as the Republicans…..which has been the absolute genius of the reform narrative. It appeals to Republicans/the right by its rhetoric of private sector efficiency and outright privatization and it appeals to Democrats with its rhetoric of social justice/civil rights. It’s a wonderfully constructed dual narrative that has and continues to work. At this point our side can’t put together a narrative that even gets into the audible range of human hearing, let alone one that scratches the itches of both political parties!
So, it’s too much to ask that anyone Obama or Clinton appoint would be pro-public Ed. They won’t be. We have to abandon that ship. It’s more reasonable to simply hope that they’d appoint people roughly on the left side of the political spectrum in general terms. That’s all.
This is frighteningly and shockingly true. Nobody out there in the presidential run is standing on the I Refuse Testing/I Refuse Reform platform — all we hear is the fuzzily repeated “but surely testing is necessary, charters are necessary” refrain.
The body isn’t even cold before the vultures begin feeding. A little class would seem to be in order.
Class:
“While I differed with Justice Scalia’s views and jurisprudence, he was a brilliant, colorful and outspoken member of the Supreme Court,” the Vermont senator said in a brief statement.
“My thoughts and prayers are with his family and his colleagues on the court who mourn his passing,” he added.
-Bernie Sanders
Oh yes! It was that classy act of voting for Citizen’s United that merely adds to the obliteration of our democracy and solidifies class polarization.
So classy . . . . Like Frank Geary meets Ralph Lauren and Itzak Perlman?
Or classy like Edwardian England?
Feeding Scalia’s barely cold corpse to the vultures is an insult to vultures . . . Even they would not be able to hold down the meal.
Comment above meant for Mike, not for Christine.
Yes, class never hurts and actually helps in most instances.
In Scalia’s case, the only class I can recognize are the “class” differences he helped create through his pro-plutocrat decisions.
Obama nominating anyone the Republicans would agree to is not likely to happen.
Reason: the bigger fish to fry for Republicans is the ACA. Their only hope for it is the SCOTUS unless they win the election decisively. Obama won’t put in an appointee likely to overturn his greatest achievement. They will deadlock unless the republicans basically think they won’t win the election in which case they may settle for what they can get in an appointee who would probably decide a few things their way.
That record is going to be broken though until the parties have a better idea where they stand – at least until the primaries are decided.
If only we can prevent a Republican from being elected president, a new dawn awaits America with this transformed Supreme Court.
The GOP obstructionism will go into hyperdrive, they will never allow Obama to select a new justice unless he’s a right wing ideologue. This is why I will vote Democratic; Bernie is my first choice but if he loses the primary then I will vote for Hillary in the general election.
All I can say is this:
Scalia could not croak soon enough, especially because of his positions on corporations as people, money as free speech, and unions as the enemy.
One death I am doing a happy dance for . . . . . .
Ding dong, he’s really dead
Get out of bed,
You sleepy head,
Ding dong, the plutocrat is dead . . . .
Not sure I would be that blunt. However, the apparent way we were going where corporations are entitled to free speech and epitomize it while unions compel and stifle really did seem topsy turvy. I do hope the reprieve from Friedrichs is real.
I do not unconditionally or necessarily disagree with your notion upon reflection.
Yet millions of people trapped in debt and poverty or having to choose between paying for enough food or paying a deductible or between paying for rent and paying for a drug prescription feels very, very blunt to me.
Thus far, I have been so fortunate not to have confronted those choices or anything like them, but people in proximity to me do . . . .
The angular tilt against the working class and in favor of the ownership class, as exemplified by too many voting records of the members of the SCOTUS is more than blunt; it has been razor-sharp and just as evil as the current face slashers of Manhattan.
Granted, the process of judicially promulgating such evil has indeed been intellectualized and civilized, but evil is evil.
Now, if only Clarence Thomas were to get off the earth in his sleep as well . . . .
Maybe God exists? Or some metaphysical forces from the universe?
I, a Bernie supporter, still have to say to myself, “How is it that Sanders has come this far???!!!”
Rendo – blunt yes – but Scaila was the scariest of them on the right. His decisions – no matter how brilliantly worded – left middle and working class Americans poorer, with less of a voice, less of a vote, disempowered, …his own original belief philosophy on the Constitution leaves out the very spirit of it in his verison. People- regular folks are leading blunt lives because of these undemocratic decisions.
Right on, Caligirl!
My advice to President Obama would be to nominate his attorney general, Loretta Lynch, an African-American woman in her mid-fifties, a prosecutor with Harvard credentials, undergraduate and law school. Then let the Republicans try to delay or block her appointment. Even if she doesn’t make it onto the court, the expected display, at her hearing, of the usual Republican animus against women and minorities should only help ensure the election of either my candidate, Bernie, or Hillary Clinton. And in either case, the rights of minorities, teachers, and public workers’ unions will be protected. I hope we can agree that the election of a Democrat in 2016 is essential as more Supreme Court appointments are anticipated in the next term.
Come to think of it, why doesn’t he appoint the First Lady?
Why does it have to be an elite Hahvahd lawyer?
I doubt Republicans would even have to give her a hearing. I am also skeptical that SCOTUS is a very important issue to the average voter.
In addition, perhaps this should be thought out more. It seems that now, more than ever, voters blame the party that holds the White House in off-year elections. One reason Republicans dominate state legislatures is because Obama was president and his party took the blame.
A Republican elected president this year could have the opposite effect and help Democrats retake federal and state offices. That is a lesson from history.
Interesting. David Denby of the New Yorker – film is usually his beat. http://www.newyorker.com/culture/cultural-comment/stop-humiliating-teachers?intcid=mod-most-popular
On Sat, Feb 13, 2016 at 5:24 PM, Diane Ravitchs blog wrote:
> dianeravitch posted: “The unexpected death of Justice Scalia has dominated > the news all afternoon. Most observers agree that the Republican Senate is > not likely to appoint any Justice nominated by President Obama. They will > wait to see who is elected president in November. &n” >
Lawrence Lessig’s name is being floated around. There is a petition circulating to nominate him, and he is vigorously opposed to the Citizen’s United decision. I think he would be a good choice. Loretta Lynch, similar to her predecessor, Eric Holder, are far too close to Wall Street.
This is an explanation of what happens with cases where decisions are pending or have not been announced yet:
http://www.scotusblog.com/2016/02/what-happens-to-this-terms-close-cases/
I need a political expert……there are now 54 Republican senators…….what is the range of possible numbers for January? If Joe Biden were to be nominated…….the nation would be choosing…..do we want Hillary, who will stick with the Biden choice.. or Trump-Cruz-Rubio-Bush? how many senate races could be affected?
Well said NYSTEACHER so how did the gay movement give wings to the human rights issue of respect for all? It took realization that most families have a friend or family member impacted by the issue and that human face made a difference. Do most families have a friend or family member that is a public school teacher? The face of a profession villianized, demoralized, scapegoated…just a thought.
The tandam issue is the DEFORMERS approach to educating the next generation as lambs to slaughter and putting a face and personall connection to that.
Until the politicians had the issue touch their own friends and family circle it was a non issue…PERHAPS too few send their children to public schools. I know many publuc school professionals who send their children to private schools…when excellent suburban public schools are available to them. Can’t shoot ourselves in our own foot. IDEA…public school teachers and government employees must send their children to public schools as part of employment in tne system… A little skin in the game…like Congress sending draftees to war but not their iwn children.
“IDEA…public school teachers and government employees must send their children to public schools as part of employment in tne system…”
Indeed. I’d also say, only public K-12 school graduates can hold positions in any public school related positions, and if it’s a higher ed related position, the highest degree has to come from a public school.
Too much?
This may be a bit off-subject, but I read what you posted on your blog, peacebwu1357, and I loved it. In my world as an inner-city teacher heavily attacked by school reform, they “came” for the low-income Language Arts teachers…and no one did anything about it. So then they went for everyone else.
Unions exist, and have there own constitutions and bylaws, for many of the same reasons that our union exists and is guided by the constitution: “in order to form a more perfect union, establish justice, insure domestic tranquility, provide for the common defence…” The privilege of membership and all the rights and benefits that come with it come at a cost: money collected in the form of taxes (dues) and the responsibility to adhere to the laws of the land. An individual may not like the way their tax dollars are spent or the specific ways their priorities are represented by their democratically chosen leaders-but the right to speak up, even step up to try on a leadership role is always available.
I would hope that Justice Scalia, being the consummate constitutionalist, would have seen that disrupting a similarly structured democracy would undermine it’s purpose, and that a teacher so bothered by the direction of his/her union had all the opportunities available to any member to maximize activism, participation and guide it’s direction.
Am I hallucinating? Having false memories? I am pretty sure I heard a radio story last night that briefly mentioned Ted Cruz questioning the “natural causes” death of Scalia. Saying there should be an investigation, saying that God wouldn’t have taken a man like him at such a pivotal time…something like that. Sound familiar? I am just trying to gauge the level of crazy.
No, dmaxmj, you’re not hallucinating:
http://www.rightwingwatch.org/content/alex-jones-obama-murdered-justice-scalia-and-donald-trump-next?utm_source=dlvr.it&utm_medium=twitter
From the article “The Republicans better block this nomination,” he said, “because if they get one more Supreme Court person in there, they’re going to trump every piece of Bill of Rights and Constitution and they’re going to get that physical civil war they want.”
Well, it’s certainly time to reexamine the Constitution from the grounds up, and make sure, justices’ political views cannot affect their judgment. They should also reexamine the lifetime tenure of justices and some other positions, like the Fed. Res. Chair position.
politco…but now blocked
http://m.motherjones.com/politics/2016/02/6-cases-now-decided-justice-scalias-death
While I can empathize with the Scalia family’s grief, in regards to him I will paraphrase comedian Moms Mabley: one should never speak ill of the dead, but only well.
Well, he’s dead: good.
Scalia was a nasty piece of work, one whose false reputation was sustained for far too long with credulous (and bi-partisan) accounts of his “brilliance,” when he was instead a clever, slippery, glib, intellectually dishonest political operator whose influence harmed many.
He invoked the constitution in order to undermine the constitution, a classic example of what the Bard referred to as the Devil quoting scripture to serve his own ends.
His falling off the perch adds yet another x factor and variable into what is already shaping up to be a momentous year of converging political and economic change/crises.
And as for the effect of Scalia’s demise on our little part of the arena, Randi Weingarten and Lily Eskelson-Garcia immediately become the overwhelming co-favorites for Luckiest Person of the Year, 2016.
Those of you dancing a victory lap thinking Friedrichs v. CTA is now moot due to a likely 4-4 tie, need to remove your dancing shoes and think again. http://www.scotusblog.com/2016/02/tie-votes-will-lead-to-reargument-not-affirmance/