CommentsA THEORY ON EVERYTHING-With the passing of 79 year-old United States Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia on Saturday one can only hope we will have a reprieve from his reactionary "originalism" legal views. This might allow us to bring our country and the Supreme Court into the 21st century and a chance of achieving liberty and justice for all under law.
Since his appointment to the Supreme Court in 1986, Scalia has been the leading voice in a broad range of precedent-establishing 5-4 conservative decisions -- overturning more liberal interpretations offered by the early Warren Court.
Up until his passing, Scalia's monomaniacal adherence to originalism has steadfastly sought to beatify a narrow interpretation of the ideas and prejudices that our Founding Fathers established in 1789 when the U.S. Constitution was ratified.
Scalia, over his almost 30 year tenure, sought to rally his conservative colleagues to his side without taking into consideration the understandable prejudices and limitations that entitled 18th White Men brought to the process of drafting this important document. Scalia has supported a line of legal thinking that leads to accepting the views of the drafters – men who lived in a world were slavery and limited civil rights for women were unquestionably the law of the land.
Scalia's passing only accentuates what must be considered the most important issue of the next Presidential Election this year. Whoever is elected president will inherit four justices in their late 70's or early 80's and will probably be called on to make three to four nominations to the Supreme Court. Given that many justices serve as many as 30 years in the job, these appointments will control the Court’s direction for the foreseeable future.
More importantly, we live in a corporate-dominated society where Supreme Court decisions such as Citizens United have allowed powerful Big Money interests to dominate government and the political process without any accountability for illegal behavior. One can be sure that if a Republican takes office, not only will a super majority of conservatives control the Supreme Court, but it is possible that this country will lose many of the civil liberties that existed under the Warren Court, an era that affirmatively sought to undo the inequities of 1789 American society.
In theory, President Obama is still in office until the end of the year and has the power to nominate a replacement for Justice Scalia. It is already clear that a Republican dominated Senate – a body that has opposed anything Obama has proposed up until this point in his second term -- will do everything it can to stall the nomination process until after the presidential elections. All of this raises the stakes for the election process unfolding now.
(Leonard Isenberg is a Los Angeles observer and a contributor to CityWatch. He was a second generation teacher at LAUSD and blogs at perdaily.com. Leonard can be reached at [email protected]) Edited for CityWatch by Linda Abrams.
