TED CRUZ op-ed: The Scalia Seat: Let The People Speak

The late Justice Antonin Scalia’s Supreme Court chair 

and the bench in front of it are draped in black wool 

crepe, in keeping with a tradition dating to 1873. AP

The legal stakes are higher than ever, and historic precedent favors waiting for a new president.

Republicans and Democrats are deeply divided over the proper role of the Supreme Court. President Obama and Democrats favor justices who see the Constitution as a potter sees clay—something that can be molded to achieve their desired results. This has led the Supreme Court to invent rights that are nowhere in the Constitution—like the right to an abortion or to same-sex marriage—and ignore or restrict rights that even nonlawyers can’t miss—like the First and Second Amendments.

Republicans view things very differently. We believe the Constitution has a fixed meaning and a judge’s task is limited—to discover what that meaning is, not to make it up.

Justice Antonin Scalia, whose passing we mourn, was a passionate champion of this humbler view of the judicial role. It is nearly impossible to overstate the significance of his passing. If Justice Scalia is replaced by a Democratic nominee, many long-cherished rights will be jeopardized.

The court would be poised to allow the banning of movies and books criticizing political candidates like Hillary Clinton, to mandate that states permit the barbaric monstrosity known as partial-birth abortion, to force the religiously devout to provide abortion-inducing drugs, and to allow the confiscation of guns by holding that the Second Amendment doesn’t include an individual right to keep and bear arms.

In 2014 when the American people last spoke in a nationwide election, they clearly repudiated Democratic governance and elected a Republican Senate majority. Although the president has the constitutional power to nominate Justice Scalia’s replacement, no nominee can be appointed without the Senate’s “Advice and Consent.” And as Minority Leader Harry Reid himself once said, “nowhere” in the Constitution “does it say the Senate has a duty to give presidential nominees a vote.”

I believe the Senate should fulfill its constitutional duty by letting the American people be heard in selecting the next Supreme Court justice. Seldom has a Supreme Court vacancy arisen before the election in a presidential election year. Benjamin Cardozo, whom the Senate confirmed in February 1932, was the last justice confirmed to fill such a vacancy before the election. That was more than 80 years ago, and it occurred when the same party controlled both the Senate and presidency.

Read the rest of Ted Cruz's op-ed HERE.

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