President Obama should appoint a replacement for late Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia because the Court needs “somebody in there to do the job and just get on with it,” retired Justice Sandra Day O’Connor told a TV station in her home state of Arizona. From CNN:
“I don’t agree (with Republicans),” O’Connor said in an interview with Phoenix-based Fox affiliate KSAZ. “We need somebody in there to do the job and just get on with it” … “You just have to pick the best person you can under these circumstances, as the appointing authority must do.”
A number of Republicans have said that whoever is elected in November, not President Obama, should choose Scalia’s replacement—an approach that would likely involve leaving a vacancy on the court for more than a year.
O’Connor was a Republican state legislator in Arizona before becoming a judge; she was appointed to the Supreme Court by Ronald Reagan in 1981 and announced her retirement in 2005. She is 85 years old.
