Judge Scalia loss could be epic
To the editor:
The unexpected and sudden death of Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia is a profound loss for the intellectual conservative movement in America. No one person, other than President Ronald Reagan, has had such a profound impact on conservatism in America over the last 50 years as Judge Scalia. His untimely death is tragic, scary and deeply political. Given only one choice, most conservatives would rather have Judge Scalia sitting on the Supreme Court bench the next four years than a Republican win the White House this November. That is how significant Judge Scalia has been and would have been for conservatism these next four years.
Judge Scalia was a constitutionalist judge. He believed in the theory of “original intent” in regards to the interpretation of the U.S. Constitution. Scalia’s interpretation of original intent is the intellectual blue print of the conservative movement in America since the 1980s. His values, ideas and votes are what has kept many of our Constitutional liberties and freedoms safe in America. Without Scalia’s intellectual framework and votes, freedoms such as speech, the right to bear arms and private property rights would have certainly been in jeopardy. The rights and lives of the babies in the womb are a little safer today because of Judge Scalia.
Now we have the likely scenario of President Obama, the most liberal president in our history, trying to nominate a liberal, socialist Supreme Court Justice. Given the fact that over the last couple of years President Obama has used “executive orders” to try and bypass Congress, the law-making body, the stakes are extremely high. If Congress allows Obama to name a radical liberal Supreme Court Justice, the balance of the court will almost certainly be a 6-3 vote for extremism and radicalism from the Left. The Supreme Court will be dominated by the view that the U.S. Constitution is a “living, breathing organism,” which put simply means, the Constitution is what that day says it is. Always blowing in the wind, a captive of the politics of the present day. It will only be a shallow political document and not the bedrock “supreme law of the land.” If Republican senators allow the President to dictate a justice, without the “advice and consent” that the Constitution calls for and demands, the American Union, if we are still a Union, will be unrecognizable in a few short years. The stakes are extremely high.
To say that the President has every right to place anyone he wants on the Supreme Court is both constitutionally and historically wrong. The President, according to the Constitution, (if we are going to go by the supreme law of the land), has the power to nominate anyone he wants to be on the High Court. Nominate, not dictatorially place or put on. The Constitution is clear in that it is the U.S. Senate’s right and responsibility to give “advise and consent” on the president’s nomination. The final word is that of the U.S. Senate. This is what our Founding Fathers demanded in Philadelphia over 200 years ago. The system of checks and balances and also the premise of separation of powers are crucial in a democratic republic. Our Founders were very careful to disallow absolute authority of any one person or any one position.
Since our nation’s birth, 29 nominees to the high court have not made it through the final Senate confirmation process. After the end of World War II, many presidential nominations to the Supreme Court have not made it through the confirmation process and thus were not confirmed to sit on the Supreme Court. Richard Nixon had four nominees that did not get confirmed, Ronald Reagan had two nominees that failed, and most recently George W. Bush had one nominee that did not make it on to the Supreme Court. Current history shows that in 1987, the New York Times Editorial Board, the Pravda of the Democratic Party, wrote that even with 18 months left in Reagan’s second term, the Democratically controlled U.S. Senate had no constitutional responsibility to confirm any of Reagan’s nominations for the rest of his presidency. Very few can forget the hate and vitriol poured out on Judge Robert Bork in that 1987 nomination process. It was so mean spirited and filled with the politics of personal destruction that Bork’s name became a verb as well as a proper noun. To be “Borked” meant to be utterly destroyed.
Over the last few years President Obama has shown great disregard for the U.S. Constitution. The President these last few years has treated the Constitution as more of a suggestion when convenient, than the superior law we are to abide by. He has shown great contempt for the bedrock principles and values of separation of powers and checks and balances. He has enacted executive orders that he himself said over 20 times were indeed unconstitutional. President Obama himself, as a U.S. Senator from the state of Illinois in 2006, led a filibuster against Justice Samuel Alito’s nomination to this very same Supreme Court.
The United States Senate must use its constitutional power in this upcoming nomination to the Supreme Court. It is the law, the supreme law of the land. If they shy away and cower from this difficult but crucial duty in this nomination process; the Constitution, the Democratic Republic, and the Republican Party could be something left only for the history books. The Constitution’s safeguards, clearly written and defined by the Founders, must be on wide public display these next 11 months.
Andrew William Coy
Cape Coral