Antonin Scalia, Supreme Court justice: ‘His contributions to the law are incalculable’

NEWS ANALYSIS:

Tom Goldstein, editor of the popular Scotusblog website that tracks the Supreme Court, called Justice Antonin Scalia a “historic figure, surely one of the most influential minds — on and off the court — of the last century.”

“His contributions to the law are incalculable,” Mr. Goldstein wrote. “They substantially reframed discussions of constitutional, statutory and administrative law.”

With the high court balanced between a conservative bloc long led by Scalia and a group of four liberal judges, Mr. Goldstein said the question of a successor will prove a complicated one in the midst of a presidential election year. Ordinarily, he noted, a replacement could be nominated and confirmed by the Senate long before President Obama leaves office in January 2017, but the normal scenario will likely not apply.

“Theoretically, the process could conclude before the November election,” he wrote. “Realistically, it cannot absent a consensus nominee — and probably not even then, given the stakes. A Democratic president could replace a leading conservative vote on a closely divided Court. The Republican Senate will not permit such a consequential nomination — which would radically shift the balance of ideological power on the Court — to go forward.”

But with several of Mr. Obama’s key executive moves, on issues ranging from immigration to climate change, facing legal challenges that will likely reach the high court this year, conservatives have lost a key vote in the search for a 5-4 majority.

Some liberal commentators on Twitter were already talking up the prospects of Srikanth “Sri” Srinivasan, the Obama administration’s former principal deputy solicitor general who was just approved by the Senate on a 97-0 vote for a seat as a judge on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit, a traditional proving ground for future Supreme Court justices.

Mr. Srinivasan’s backers are arguing that allowing the Supreme Court to go more than a year with a vacancy will prove untenable.