i know we are not to speak ill of the dead, but i didn’t feel one iota of dismay when i heard the news that supreme court justice antonin scalia died today. in fact, i felt a slight moment of elation, then a moment of dread when i realized that republicans are going to drag out obama’s justice appointment as long as possible in hopes that a republican president is elected. (IF a repub is elected.)
scalia was one of the most conservative justices. here’s an oddity of the court: all the justices are either catholic or jewish, both types of religious people the populace tends to veer away from in an election. four of the five catholics are conservatives (they are also men). as such, his type of catholicism was of the pre-vatican II type – in that he wishes we would go back to that time and has searched for churches that lean toward keeping the spirit of pre-vat alive. 
so, scotus is the end-all be-all of laws. congress can make them. people can break/challenge them. scotus figures out if the law is constitutional or not. and all court cases involving that topic basically look to what the highest court ruled previously (whether it’s district, scotus, state supreme, etc). when the supreme court rules on a subject, that’s it. there’s no more appealing after that. if they don’t want to hear a case, then the court it came from is the rule. [i love law. it’s researching rules. can’t beat that.]
our court leaned conservative, but with scalia’s death, obama’s appointment, which will hopefully be quick-ish, should heave the court toward a more moderate or liberal view. 
now let’s take a break from my disjointed post and look at a few of scalia’s great quotes:
“Mere factual innocence is no reason not to carry out a death sentence properly reached.” (think about that one.)
“The Supreme Court of the United States has descended from the disciplined legal reasoning of John Marshall and Joseph Story to the mystical aphorisms of the fortune cookie.” 
“I and my court owe no apology whatever for Bush versus Gore. We did the right thing. So there!”