I don’t think it’s ever really OK to gleefully celebrate someone’s passing, and I’m certainly not going to do so here.  I have seen some fairly nasty things on social media, but in a series of encouraging and affirming posts from my friends on Facebook and Twitter, I’ve seen restraint, class, and a comforting rise-above attitude.  I certainly didn’t agree with almost any Scalia position in his thirty years on the Supreme Court, but that doesn’t mean that he didn’t serve with what he truly believed were the best interests of the country at heart.  That we can disagree so vociferously on seemingly all of these matters, from campaign finance reform to health care to basic civil liberties underscores the fundamental strength of our democracy.  Which is sure to come into question over the subsequent eleven months until the next president takes office.

In that vein, I give you five of the most important implications of Justice Scalia’s death over the course of the next year:

  1. A shrill, polarized debate will now reach a fever pitch

If you thought the current presidential debate more closely resembled a sorority catfight than a presidential campaign, you ain’t seen nothin’ yet.  The tenor of the debate promises to become even less civil and more emotional, partisan, and petulant given the stakes involved.  The protagonists know the impact that the next president will have from Day 1.  Never mind that the next president will probably get to appoint at least two more judges, the certainty that the swing vote is up for grabs is already sending the masses of the asses and the elephants into a tizzy.  This nomination could swing the Supreme Court for the next thirty years.  And everyone knows it.  This article from Vox breaks it down nicely.

  1. A range of critical, impending issues on the Supreme Court docket are now uncertain

Scalia was the arch-conservative of the court with his lackey Thomas sure to join him in any party-line vote on the contentious issues of the day.  That vote is now gone, and the ideological bent of the court is effectively split 4-4 (depending on the way in which the Anthony Kennedy wind is blowing that day).  This means that the issues that the court is set to hear in the next session, including immigration, abortion, birth control, climate change, and, perhaps most critically for the political future of our country, redistricting.  See this excellent article by Think Progress for a breakdown of the issues and how each promises to play out.  These issues deal not only with the fate of our own political system but the ability of the United States to take a leading role in what I believe to be the biggest issue of the coming century: climate change.  To say the stakes are high is to put it mildly.

  1. The Republican Party will be further cast as the “Party of No”

While the Republican Party has cast itself in this light for the majority of Obama’s presidency,[1] this fact will be on full display for the American electorate yet again this year.  It is not only irresponsible but also unprecedented to not vote on a sitting president’s Supreme Court appointment.  Yes, even in an election year, as this post from SCOTUSblog points out.  There is precedent for this.  A Democratic-majority Senate unanimously approved Justice Kennedy in 1988, Reagan’s last year in office, among other instances from the last century.  What would be unprecedented is not having a confirmation vote for a Supreme Court nominee for an entire year.

Mitch McConnell, ever the obstructionist, has claimed that the American people deserve to have their voice heard on the issue.  And Elizabeth Warren, ever the eloquent defender of the left, retorted succinctly and correctly that they did: when they elected President Obama in 2008 and again in 2012.  The Senate absolutely has the right to reject any nominees that Obama puts forth, as the Democrat-led Senate did with Robert Bork in 1987.  But they do not, as Ted Cruz smugly states, have an obligation to Scalia to wait until the next president is elected.  That action, as this article from The Atlantic points out, is harmful to our democracy and disrespectful to the legacy of Scalia himself, who favored a strict interpretation of the constitution in which failing to vote on the legal appointments of the president is itself a violation of the Senate’s fundamental charter.

  1. Voter turnout in the November elections will increase

In the coming days and months, there will be an even-greater barrage of campaign e-mails, screaming stump speeches, and heartfelt pleas to get you to the voting booths.  Each side will try to rally their bases that much more fervently in an effort to cast the deciding votes.  Republicans, as they have for the last several election cycles, will try to disenfranchise as many poor minority voters as they can in the hopes of marginalizing any boost that this demographic invariably provides their rivals.  They will also use a fear and loathing campaign directed by their propaganda arm (FOX News) to try to scare the shit out of their base to convince them that we’re one socialist president and jurist away from becoming Venezuela.  The Democrats, for their part, will try to convince their base to show up for a couple of white people who we’re really pretty sure have their best interests at heart.  The minority voters who make up the large swing contingent of Democrats turned up for Obama but haven’t seen the promised results and may be wary of being sold yet another false bill of goods.  The success of both efforts will go a large way toward determining who the next president, as well as the next Supreme Court justice, will be.  If the promise of the stakes of the election outweighs the disgust people feel at the incivility of the ensuing debate, voter turnout will indeed increase, and it will be a boon for the Democrats.

  1. Your new Supreme Court justice will be even further ideologically afield

If the debate is as pitched and bitter as I fear it will be, it will pull the country in increasingly partisan directions.  That could well lead to the eventual president-elect feeling it necessary to confirm their party’s electoral victory with an F-U nomination (the likes of Robert Bork) that they would hope to ram down the losing party’s throats.  This is even more likely if the incoming president happens to have a Senate majority on their side.  Which means that rather than healing the country and allowing us to work on bridging the divide in what is sure to be a contentious, emotionally-wrought election, that this nomination will lead us further down the path of decidedly uncivil conduct.

Each party and their prospective president would be searching for a standard bearer for the new century.  The Republicans would no doubt be searching for their heir-apparent to Scalia, someone who would champion the right’s cause at any expense and in any case.  The left would be searching for another Warren, Marshall, or Ginsburg (props to the Notorious RBG) to advocate as artfully as these titans for the interests of the left.

I’m no Nostradamus, but if I’m reading the tea leaves correctly, it’s going to be a Clinton victory and close party-line vote (with the Democrats having reclaimed control of the Senate) to approve the next Supreme Court Justice of the United States of America: the Honorable Barack Hussein Obama.

Hey, a guy can dream, can’t he?

[1] Witness Mitch McConnell’s famous declaration that his primary goal as Senate majority leader was not to pass any set legislation but to ensure that Obama was a one-term president.  We get it Mitch, you’re an asshole.