This past Saturday, February 13th, Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia died at the age of 79 at a resort in West Texas. Justice Scalia has served three decades on the Supreme Court and is considered by Judge Richard A. Posner to be “the most influential justice of the last quarter-century.” Scalia was a conservative judge and was very fond of originalism: a method of interpretation that attempts to understand what the founders meant when creating the laws originally.

Just hours after Justice Scalia’s death, the left and right wings had started to set up preparations to make sure the replacement will be from each of their own parties. For example, The Center for Law and Justice had already come up with a list of five conservative nominees within hours of the Scalia’s death. There are organizations for each party organizing ways to make sure that their preferred This is predicted be ones of the hardest fought Supreme Court justice battles in a generation. Depending on which party gets their way, whether there is going to be a conservative or liberal judge replacement, it would determine the outcome of important current issues like abortion and climate change.

The attempt to shape the supreme court’s future has brought in  many groups that have not usually played central roles in supreme court fights. For example, The League of Conservation Voters prioritize climate change so highly that they sent out 1.5 million emails in an attempt to convince people to reach out to their senators, and try to convince them to vote for Obama’s Supreme Court nomination.   
Republicans are going to try to make the case that the next Supreme Court judge nomination should be made by the next president, not Obama. The president’s coalition will argue that they should move forward with the nomination now and not wait until next year. Currently, the government has decided that there is only one president at a time, so once president Obama picks his nomination it will be voted on. This is bound to be one of the greatest arguments between the political parties in decades.

http://www.latimes.com/nation/la-na-gay-marriage-scalia-dissent-20150626-story.html