By the end of January, Republicans will control the presidency, House, Senate, majority of State legislatures, majority of governorships – and before you know it, could control the Supreme Court as well.
The first step will be replacing Antonin Scalia, who passed away in February. Others could retire or pass away too, which would allow conservatives to take a majority position on the court. Left-leaning judge Ruth Bader Ginsburg is 83 years old, while her liberal cohort Stephen Breyer is 78. Scalia passed away at 79.
Barack Obama’s pick to replace Scalia was judge Merrick Garland, who has a reputation as a moderate. Senate Republicans have held off on confirming Garland in the event of a Trump presidency, so a more conservative candidate could be confirmed instead.
Thus far, Trump’s Supreme Court shortlist has 21 potential nominees, but who is the most conservative of them all? A new study has been released on which is most like Scalia.
A panel of legal scholars has identified Utah Supreme Court Justice Thomas Lee as the candidate on President-elect Donald Trump’s list of potential Supreme Court nominees most like the late Justice Antonin Scalia. The four-person group produced a paper called “Searching for Justice Scalia: Measuring The ‘Scalia-ness’ of the Next Potential Member of the U.S. Supreme Court,” which measured key characteristics to determine which candidates are most likely to exhibit Scalia’s jurisprudence and style.
“If one is serious about replacing Justice Scalia with a jurist like him, one should care more about how a potential replacement reached a decision, which will illuminate how a judge approaches the law,” the authors write. “This, in turn, will provide a far clearer window into how that judge would behave when elevated to the Supreme Court, and, ironically, the outcomes they would reach.”
The study sought to measure each candidates “Scalia-ness” with a three-pronged criteria: how much the candidate engages with or promotes originalism (Scalia’s preferred legal interpretive theory,) in their opinions; how often they cite Scalia’s non-judicial writings; and how often they write separate opinions.
If you thought Lee’s name sounded familiar it’s because his brother is Utah GOP Sen. Mike Lee. He is a graduate of Chicago Law School and clerked for Justice Clarence Thomas at the Supreme Court before.
H/T The Daily Caller
Who do you think should replace Scalia? Let us know in the comments and share this post on Facebook and Twitter!
“Scalia-ness” is perhaps less important than the Judeo-Christian morality and cultural values that pervaded this country for it first 200 years and helped greatly to make it great. It is very important for Donald to emphasize these Judeo-Christian values during his administration, and one way to do it is to select Supreme Court nominees based on their emphasis on such values. Two such men would be former Alabama Supreme Court Chief Justice Roy Moore, who was deposed because he insisted on displaying the Ten Commandments in the Alabama Courts Building, and Governor Mike Huckabee, who brings the loving face of Christianity to all who see him. Perhaps this is a good place to broaden the discussion into Religion and its role in our Society under a Trump administration. In my view, two intertwined religious issues have bedevilled American Society for over 50 years. The first is the War on Christianity, presently being fought by the atheists and the Islamists against the predominant role of Christianity in the US. Under Obama, especially, who seems to be a closet muslim, Christianity is to be diminished at every turn, especially in favor of Islam. The issue actually started long ago, in the form of a Supreme Court Decision motivated by Madalyn Murray O’Hare, an avowed and outspoken attheist. The result of this decision was that church bells were silenced because their ringing in public offended her. But that was long before Islam came in force to US soil. Now one hears the meuzzins calling the Islamic faithful five times a day from their minarets, using powerful sound systems to spread their message publicly. So it is now only a matter of fairness that Christians should again be able to ring out their message from the bell towers of their Churches. The second, intertwined issue is that of abortion. In my opinion, abortion should not ever have become a political issue, certainly not a Federal issue. The Federal Government was established to regulate issues between states, and issues affecting ALL citizens. Abortion only directly affects women, and then only women of childbearing age. Abortion is properly an issue between the pregnant mother-to-be, her family and spiritual advisors, the father’s family and his spiritual advisors, and the doctors who are called upon to perform their medical feats. Somehow the Democrat Party and the Progressive Movement have made Federally-funded abortion a right under the Constitution, via the Roe v. Wade decision, and almost a duty for the medical profession, even if their own faith forbids it. Evangelistic Christians, mainly conservative Republicans, will never prevail in overturning Roe V. Wade simply because the technology now exists to either prevent or interrupt pregnancy, Catholics will never fully accept the technology. Perhaps the best path for the Trump administration would be to try to persuade Evangelistic Christians to accept a repeal of the O’Hare decision and removal of Federal funding of abortions in place of a repeal of Roe v. Wade.