The White House has confirmed, U.S. President Barack Obama will proceed with nominating someone to fill the now empty seat on the U.S. Supreme Court.
This, despite growing Republican opposition to even considering any nominee during this election year.
Our U.S. correspondent Priscilla Huff reports:
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President Obama will do everything he can to get this person through. the U.S. Senate confirmation process
officials who have worked with President Obama that
"He's going to make it as appealing as possible and as difficult as possible for the Senate not to confirm this person,"
White House deputy spokesman Eric Schultz says the president already knows what he is looking for in a possibly nominee
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President Obama himself is a constitutional law professsor
And the court is facing several critical cases in the coming months
including union rights, abortion rights and affirmative action - whether minorities should receive preferential treatment.
A strict reading of the text of the U-S Constitution -
as Justice Antonin Scalia - would have done as a conservative judge
would have led to a divided court....
but President Obama is likely to nominate someone with more liberal leanings.
Which is why the political stakes are so high
and why republicans
such as former U-S Supreme Court clerk and now presidential candidate Senator Ted Cruz
are so adamant, the nomination should wait.
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Senate Republicans have tools
they can drag their feet on scheduling hearings of the Judiciary Committee and slow walk any nomination to the floor.
Tactics endorsed by other presidential candidates, such as Donald Trump
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Some have pointed out,
Senate Majority leader Mitch McConnel made a bad mistake in tipping his hand on how he'd handle a Supreme Court nominee so soon after the news that Justice Scalia had died
And Democrats have been quick to reject assertions that nominations just aren't done during election years as false.
For now, the short lists for nominees is quite diverse
including current U-S Attorney General Loretta Lynch
Indian American appeals court Judge Sri Srinivasan
Attorney Neal Katyal - who surprised many by making the winning argument in the Hamdan case over unfair detention
or even a sitting U-S Senator such as Sheldon WhiteHouse of Rhode Island or Amy Klobuchar of Minnesota
Priscilla Huff, Washington
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