There is the prospect of a recess appointment to fill the vacancy. The Senate can stay in session until the end of the term of one third of the senate. There will a period of in January 2017 when the senate is not in session and BHO will still be POTUS where he can appoint someone to serve out one year on the SCOTUS. It will be ugly no matter what the senate does. Justice Scalia set the bar very high for integrity and dedication to the law and the constitution as the foundation for authority in our nation. Rest in peace.
Cheers

What if the "next President" is Hillary or Sanders? It will be a lot easier to block an Obama appointment than one by a newly elected President during the "honeymoon" period.

Maybe there should be a constitutional amendment that Supreme Court justices NOT be lawyers or judges. This would still leave the seats open to Constitutional scholars, historians, and anyone else with an understanding of the law and the ability to reason.

Sadly I fear that his handlers will think of that. Let's hope that he is so self-important that he tries to place someone completely unpalatable on the bench.

With the death of the best jurist on the Supreme Court, we will find out what the Republican majority in congress is really all about. Scalia was a Constitutionalist par excellence, He dove into the words as they were meant and expressed by those who wrote them, at the time they wrote them. We know Obama's intent to replace him, we will discover the intent of congress to prevent it.

No matter who he picks, the Republicans will argue the person is a radical liberal and "fight like hell."

You are correct that the Constitution does not require that the Justices (or any federal judges for that matter) come from the "legal profession." In fact, formal legal training was very scarce in the colonies. However, it quickly became virtually unthinkable to appoint to the highest court in the land someone without legal training of any kind. Of course during the 19th and 20th centuries it was not uncommon to appoint someone who, while a lawyer by formal training, was neither a practicing lawyer nor a judge at the time of their appointment. Earl Warren, Felix Frankfurter and Hugo Black all come to mind. In recent years it has become much more fashionable to appoint sitting appellate judges out of the federal or state judiciaries. I guess the reason Presidents like to do this is so they can look at the candidate's written appellate opinions to get a feel for what they might do on the Court. The idea being that if they have already taken stands on a variety of issues the President is less likely to be "fooled" into nominating a sheep when he really wants a goat. See Eisenhower's nomination of Warren for an example of a President who was badly fooled.

Could be truly a dark day for the republic.
If the Dimocrats are serious about attaining absolute power, here is what they'll do:
Barack Obama resigns the presidency.
Joe Biden becomes president without having to run for anything.
Biden turns around and nominates Barack Obama to be the replacement Supreme Court justice.
The Republican congress caves again and confirms the nomination, because they don't want to be called "racist".
Is anybody out there scared now?

Maybe Obama will nominate himself after he isnt president any more, and we can go faster down the socialist road and get it over with. Between sanders as president, elizabeth warren as VP, and Obama as a supreme court judge, things would go fast.

If he is clever, he will nominate an Appeals Court Judge who was approved by the Senate on a 98-0 vote within the last few years. There are a number of those. If he does that, it will make the "stonewall" option untenable.

yessir, this makes the election even more important. -- j
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Obama will definitely nominate and fight for someone. If he picked a centrist, he might even win. But I can't see him trying for a compromise, I expect he'll pick a strong liberal and fight like hell.

Historical precedent is on both sides of this issue, but seems biased toward waiting. While there are disadvantages to a 4-4 court, moving the court to 5-4 liberal will do far more damage than unresolved issues.

If a liberal justice had died, I suspect there would be more Republican support for letting Obama replace them. It might be interesting for the Republican candidate to select his choice prior to the election so that the debate can begin but I doubt that will happen.

McConnell not only will cave, he will lead the parade for whomever the Big O nominates. McConnell, keep in mind, introduced a bill a few weeks ago to give the president unlimited power to initiate and maintain war without ever bothering with that now useless body called congress. This guy would be the running mate for Sanders.

Bad as it gets for the Constitution.

The Citizens United decision was the result of over a century of converting the Federal courts judiciary to career judges and academicians isolated from the revelations of politics and the consequences of decisions. The SCOTUS trapped itself by the observation that the historic decisions of Federal courts had evolved the legal description of corporation from an artifact into personhood so that laws involving personal liability could be enforced against corporate "persons". The court long ago absolved itself of responsibility to prevent corruption in the political process.

The Constitution does not require that members of the SCOTUS come from the legal profession, and in fact the intent was that those members come from professions with public involvement in industry and politics, so that they would have a conscious awareness of the impact of their decisions. This is the unforeseen flaw in a "nation of law": that we become subject to the rules created by a society of legal oligarchs.

Lately all the so-called "mainstream" of the GOP has been willing to show is their cowardice.
We shall see . . .

I see your point and feel certain that liberals would propose exactly that.

Not even thinking that there is a possibility that Obama won't nominate someone. I am unsure if I want the Senate to move forward or stonewall. Of course which will be heavily weighted by who Obama puts forward .

Allosaur...the President should be ashamed...not you.

If our Republican dominated Congress is willing to show some true leadership, it will vigorously fight to keep the "Dark Lord" from seating another of his extreme liberal puppets.

Bader-Ginsburg should be comforted, at least...now they'll probably back off on trying to get her to retire so the President could replace her.

Though Justice Scalia would likely have preferred to stay around to see the court properly "balanced", his days of worrying about his country are over. May he rest in Peace.

Well, I understand your trepidation but I think we should follow the law. After all, elections do have consequences and Obama was elected in 2012 for a four year term ending in January of 2017. During that period he has obligations and duties to carry out and this is one of them. Let's see who he nominates, at least. Look at it this way: If this were the end of President Cruz's second term and Justice Ginsburg dropped dead, would you advocate that he not nominate anyone or that the Senate not act on his nomination? What would you think of liberals who so argued?

I'm just waiting for someone to observe that the Koch brothers (those evil, fascist villain billionaires the left passionately hates) despise Donald Trump, and are considering whether or not to spend $100M in an effort to stop him. That should be worth about another $20M in free media campaigning for Trump to attract Democrat voters.

Cynically/realistically based on the past the GOP members of the senate will accept obama's appointee for political reasons after pretending to oppose her. Oh, yes, it will be a minority female as a PC excuse for them to confirm. Cruz and Rubio will cast their votes just as their GOP masters "advise."

While I see your point. I am on the fence about this at this time. Due to my fear of a Court which could quite possibly swing very liberal for a long time based on the length of time the other justices might live.

I hate to wish for someone's passing but I can see that happening. At least that is assuming we get a conservative in office next. Though I seriously doubt we get a decent candidate in the foreseeable future.

Either do I, but we can hope and pray.

Isn't this the same Mitch McConnell who rarely if ever goes against the Democrats! Didn't he say just a few days ago that if the Republicans go against Obama that it will anger the Independents. He will cave.