Justice Antonin Scalia's death quickly sparks political battle

By Stephen Collinson, CNN

Updated 0534 GMT (1334 HKT) February 14, 2016
Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia dead at 79

Senator vows opposition to Obama's Scalia successor

Obama says he will nominate someone to replace Scalia "in due time"
McConnell, Reid clash over whether Obama should name a successor

Washington (CNN)Justice Antonin Scalia's death immediately triggered a monumental election-year battle in Washington over whether President Barack Obama should choose a successor who could tilt the Supreme Court toward liberals.

Within two hours of Scalia's death being reported, presidential candidates along with Republican and Democratic leaders on Capitol Hill were feuding over whether Obama should appoint a replacement for the eloquent and outspoken Scalia or wait for the next administration to make a decision. The battle lines underscored the huge political stakes in the 2016 election, which could cement the ideological balance of the court for years to come.

Obama said Saturday he would nominate a successor "in due time," but Republican Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell insisted the next administration should make the appointment.

"The American people should have a voice in the selection of their next Supreme Court Justice," the Kentucky Republican said. "Therefore, this vacancy should not be filled until we have a new President."

But Senate Minority Leader Harry Reid issued a scathing statement, previewing the heated fight ahead.

OneManLegion:

Justice has not been served.
The courts are given sizeable discretionary powers in the interpretation of statutes because the legislators are aware that no statute can possibly foresee and take care of all possible loopholes in a statutory provision. This explains why there are several rules of interpretation of statutes allowed the courts by law among which we have :

The direct rule

The golden rule

The mischief rule; and

The Ejusdem Generis rule.

The justices deliberately refused to employ the right rule of interpretation because of whatever reasons. You don't bungle justice on the altar of legalese.

aaronson:
Pschologically, You can't eradicate human cognitive bias because it unconscious and influences conscious decision for all human.

oduastates:
Ad incompetence.
How many of them made their reputation based on legal excellence?

The Head of Presidential Anti-corruption Committee, Prof Itse Sagay, has again voiced his concern over some recent rulings of the Supreme Court on election petitions, particularly those held in Rivers and Akwa Ibom states.

Sagay, who spoke with newsmen at the Olu Palace, Warri on Saturday, warned that the rulings, which allow people who were declared winners without elections in spite of copious evidences of irregularities and heavy human and material casualties, set a dangerous precedent in the history of elections.

“The judgements are very perverse, particularly relating to Akwa Ibom and Rivers. Everybody knows that there were no elections in those two states.
“Everybody knows that people like Wike climbed into the governorship seat over dead bodies and over bloods of human beings. There were no elections, they wrote the results; the evidence is there,” he said.
According to Sagay, what the Supreme Court has done is to set the clock of electoral excellence and fairness and credibility back by, ” I do not want to say a thousand years, but certainly it is taking us back to where we were before Jega came in and sanitize the system.”

“We are going to have primitive and barbaric electoral culture; ‘kill as much as you can, destroy as much as you can, create as much catastrophe, but if you can find yourself on that seat, you are confirmed, regardless of the means by which you got there’.
“That is a very major setback to democracy and the rule of law,” he said.

Similarly, the erudite constitutional lawyer also flayed the present crop of Supreme Court judges, insisting that they have degraded the court from decades ago when the Nigerian Supreme Court was ranked among the best in the world.

“I remember 15, 20 years ago, we had a Supreme Court that is the best in the world – better than the one you have in the US. That was when you had Justices (Kayode) Eso, (Andrew) Obaseki, Anyagolou, (Adolphous) Karibe-Whyte, Bello and so on. Those people brought a culture to the Supreme Court and most of us thought when they left the culture would remain but it hasn’t.

“New people have come, much younger people, and they have different approach to life because I don’t understand why you would have law, which is in conflict with justice and you prefer to apply that law – technical law, which is in conflict with justice. As we have seen in the case of Akwa Ibom and Rivers and a few other cases.

“So I think their orientations are different. I think the older ones who are gone believed that justice was number one. In such a case, you ask where does the justice lies? They now interpreted the law in line with justice.

“But now what we have is a group of people in the Supreme Court, who do not care where their legal interpretation is leading them. Once you have a divorce between law and justice, the whole legal system will break down and that is what has happened,” he added.

Prof Sagay has also called for disciplinary actions against Senior Advocates of Nigeria (SANs) and other senior lawyers who are seen to be encouraging corrupt politicians and looters of the nation’s treasury.

He said, “There are a group of senior lawyers who have totally departed from anything that the calling of the law profession requires; they have thrown in their lots with the looters and have become, I won’t call them fellow looters, but definitely, they have started enjoying and sharing in the proceeds of crimes of these looters and because of that they are absolutely now against the anti-corruption law.

“There is need to have these Senior Advocates thoroughly disciplined and if they would not accept discipline, they need to be removed from the profession before they bring more disgrace to the profession and at the same time drag this country down economically.”

tuale4u:


The death of US supreme court Judge and fight over who should nominate his successor in d US clearly prove that Supreme court Judges dont just follow law verbatim but interprete it base on thier conviction,ideology and personalities. In the US, we can see the effect of Obama appointed Supreme court Judges in appriving gay marriage and forcing it on US federation.

This we can clearly see in Nigeria with the recent Judgements by PDP appointed Supreme court Judges. None of d Judges in d Supreme court is appointed by APC or Buhari. We can clearly see why PMB is saying Judiciary is his headache. Because most of the Judges were appointed under pro corruption ideology.

PDP supreme court Judges made thier Judgement to prevent PDP rapid extinction. They only just returned d favour done to them by PDP.

ZeroTolerance:
They didn't, but the tribunal and appeal court judges below them made their reputation based on legal excellence.
Hypocrites everywhere.

swagaholic:
Who appointed d court of appeal judges?? Am curious

tuale4u:


I agree with you 100%. That is why i made this post. To let people know supreme court Judgements are not water tight but influence by thier ideologies. For those defending d recent electoral Judgements as pure law, should have a rethink.
PDP supreme court Judges made thier Judgement to prevent PDP rapid extinction.

thunderrider:
Just as if what Tinubu and his cohort are doing in Lagos with the Judiciary is in anyway different

tuale4u:


I agree with you 100%. That is why i made this post. To let people know supreme court Judgements are not water tight but influence by thier ideologies.

tuale4u:


I agree with you 100%. That is why i made this post. To let people know supreme court Judgements are not water tight but influence by thier ideologies. For those defending d recent electoral Judgements as pure law, should have a rethink.
PDP supreme court Judges made thier Judgement to prevent PDP rapid extinction.

tuale4u:


http://edition.cnn.com/2016/02/13/politics/antonin-scalia-supreme-court-replacement/index.html

The death of US supreme court Judge and fight over who should nominate his successor in d US clearly prove that Supreme court Judges dont just follow law verbatim but interprete it base on thier conviction,ideology and personalities. In the US, we can see the effect of Obama appointed Supreme court Judges in appriving gay marriage and forcing it on US federation.

This we can clearly see in Nigeria with the recent Judgements by PDP appointed Supreme court Judges. None of d Judges in d Supreme court is appointed by APC or Buhari. We can clearly see why PMB is saying Judiciary is his headache. Because most of the Judges were appointed under pro corruption ideology.

If who appoint Judges matter in such an advance democracy and rich country like US, then u can imagine d impact in a poor country like Nigeria.

PDP supreme court Judges made thier Judgement to prevent PDP rapid extinction. They only just returned d favour done to them by PDP.

kenny987:
I wonder how people arrive at these opinions especially with this PDP/APC lens through which people view things on the national scene nowadays.

The personality of the judge over any matter is not in doubt but his training confines him and in fact binds him to the letters n spirit of the law. If the op is conversant with a little bit of our legislation as far as evidence is concerned then he may be aware that until 2011, when the Evidence Act was amended, the courts could not countenance digital evidence therefore things like emails, text messages, call records and so on would have no probative value attached to them by the courts. On this alone, if evidence before the court was only of this nature in support of one's case, the courts would not identify or accept them because they were not provided for on the law.

This is the same position on the Electoral Act. At the time this was passed into law in 2010, the card readers were not envisaged and therefore not made part of the electoral process by law. Therefore, the courts as evidenced in the reasoning of the Supreme Court, will not attach value to it over and above the Voters Register which is clearly provided for by the Act.

Judges are not makers of law. They interprete them and there are laid down rules of interpretation. The most a court can do in its judgment or ruling is suggest an action be taken in the context of making legislation. That is why it has directed INEC to see to the inclusion of the card readers in subsequent Electoral legislations. It is circumstances like these not previously envisaged that enrich our jurisprudence.

Coming now to state that the SC justices passed their judgements because they were appointed by the PDP is myopic at this time and this is me being charitable. If I am not mistaken, the current administration has not appointed any new federal judges at the Court of Appeal either so how then were judgments made in favour of the APC?

The same Supreme Court gave judgment in favour of APC in Lagos and a few others still based on the card reader and its inadmissibility so why the outcry over Akwa Ibom and Rivers?

On the issues of violence and killings, those were all based on hearsay. The security officials who testified could not point to anyone arrested neither did petitioners present evidence that people were killed.
The Courts/Judges are trained to be dispassionate and follow the law as it is. None of the reasons for their decisions were taken without relevant provisions of the law guiding them. Substantive law takes precedence over guidelines so even the INEC guidelines will not supersede the extant Electoral Act.

Please do not disparage the laws and our institutions just because of political inclinations. Attacking the personality of the judges is also uncalled for. They have done their jobs and justice has been served.

ZeroTolerance:
Rubbish. How do you guys even imagine APC won the election in Rivers or Akwa Ibom?

Appeal court judges do not make decisions based on personal convictions right?

tuale4u:

http://thenationonlineng.net/485271-2/

From this news from CNN, we can understand and relate better with Prof Itse Sagay position on d Judgement. Anorher set of Supreme court appointed under a different circumstance could have given a different Judgement.

tuale4u:

http://thenationonlineng.net/485271-2/

From this news from CNN, we can understand and relate better with Prof Itse Sagay position on d Judgement. Anorher set of Supreme court appointed under a different circumstance could have given a different Judgement.

tuale4u:

http://thenationonlineng.net/485271-2/

From this news from CNN, we can understand and relate better with Prof Itse Sagay position on d Judgement. Anorher set of Supreme court appointed under a different circumstance could have given a different Judgement.

alrahmanonline:
@ Op no matter how true your opinion may be, i wish to inform you that you've just earned yourself thorough Weekend bashing of life, So stay put while you have your helmet on... Cos you'll recieve a hell of attack from them... i no mention names o, Ehn ehn..

FlyboyZee:

1. This your ish is devoid of any form of altruistic reasoning. The process, way and manner of appointing Supreme Court judges in the US is very different from what obtains in Nigeria. So, there is absolutely no basis for your write up...

2. Are you inferring that the Judges of the Election Petitions Tribunal that were contradicting themselves were appointed by PMB to do APC's bidding?

3. Do you also know that all the Appeal Court judges that gave contradictory judgments against the PDP were appointed under PDP Governments? Thus, inferring that they did PDP's bidding by cancelling election results or annulling elections that favoured PDP and in son cases awarding it to the APC?

My dear, you need to sit down and think properly before you make any write-up. What I read in your post smirks of cretinic (sic) and myopic reasoning...

tuale4u:
http://thenationonlineng.net/485271-2/

From this news from CNN, we can understand and relate better with Prof Itse Sagay position on d Judgement. Anorher set of Supreme court appointed under a different circumstance could have given a different Judgement.