With the recent death of Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia, nominated by President Reagan, the opinions on how to fill his vacant seat came from seemingly everywhere. Some were relieved that the reign of conservative rulings had ended, while others panicked at President Obama being able to nominate a new justice to the Supreme Court. The president’s nomination could cause the Supreme Court’s scales to tip in a more liberal direction, much to the dismay of the GOP.
Personally, I love the idea of Obama being able to nominate a new justice to the Supreme Court, but even if I didn’t, I recognize the idiocy of the GOP threatening to block the nomination. It is the constitutional right of the president to nominate a candidate and for that candidate to be properly considered by the Senate. The Constitution is clear: the president nominates the candidate, the candidate attends hearings before the Senate Judiciary Committee, who can vote to send the nomination to the Senate which then can confirm or reject it.
The president and the Senate have a duty and a right to elect a suitable candidate. A new justice is needed to fill the vacancy and break the evenness of justices left in Scalia’s death. Yes, Obama’s term is ending, but there is still a year left — a year is enough time to select a suitable justice and long enough that it is unreasonable to block his duty. Yet Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell has stated that the Republican-controlled Senate will not consider a nomination from President Obama.
McConnell justified his stance by saying that the people should decide, aka ‘let’s wait for the election cycle and pray for a Republican president to be elected, so we can put in a new Scalia.’ Would McConnell suggest letting the people decide if the president were Romney rather than Obama? McConnell has completely politicized the branch of government that is supposed to be politically neutral. Justices have their positions for life, meaning that they owe nothing to the government that appointed them or to voters; they make decisions based on their convictions and expertise in analyzing the constitution. Now, of course, justices are humans with political views that do interact with how they vote on the Supreme Court. That being said, however, the Supreme Court is not supposed to be politicized in the bipartisan way McConnell is imposing.
McConnell is no stranger to blocking nominations for justices from the Obama administration. He has blocked multiple nominations including vacancies in courts deemed emergencies, which means that Americans are being denied justice because the court is not filled. These ridiculous obstructionist policies from the GOP are unconstitutional. It’s funny to me that politicians who deify Scalia, a strict textualist, would choose to reinterpret the constitution just because of political difference.
My issue with McConnell, and other members of the Senate who support his motion, is that it is not based on any inherent issue with the timeline or the legislation; it is purely based off of political affiliation. To reiterate, McConnell’s choice to block Obama is only because the president is a Democrat. I am comfortable with the Senate finding a candidate inappropriate, after sufficient hearings and consideration, but it is unjust to not even allow Obama to fulfill his right of putting forward a nomination that will actually be considered. The Supreme Court should not be an ideological center used as a pawn by each party to impose the divide between the GOP and the Democrats. Aside from the inappropriateness of McConnell’s threat, it encourages Americans to categorize their country as deeply divided. I’m aware that America is surely divided on many issues, yet the GOP/Democrat rift interrupts productive discussion and progress. There is not enough willingness to listen or to compromise and McConnell’s obdurate position proves this.
Anita Raychawdhuri is senior majoring in English