St. Joe-Benton Harbor News

After the recent passing of well-respected Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg, the election-year timing of a vacant seat on the highest court in the land has led to the kind of political circus such circumstances are known to produce, but whether or not a sitting president has the authority to appoint the next justice is a question that stands independent of politics.

Adam Carrington, an assistant professor of Politics at Hillsdale College's Van Andel Graduate School of Statesmanship, recently appeared on WJR’s "The Paul W. Smith Show" to speak about what the U.S. Constitution says regarding President Donald Trump’s authority to fill the vacancy left by Ginsburg’s passing. 

“All it says, regardless of what you think about other arguments of fairness or other things that people are throwing around -- it says that if there’s vacancy on the Court, the president has the power, so long as he is the president, to nominate, and the Senate, so long as the Senators have their terms, or are taking part in their terms, have the power to confirm or not confirm,” Carrington told Smith.

Adam Carrington | Hillsdale College

Regardless of any feelings on the matter, it is an open-and-shut case constitutionally, he explained.

But a lot of people are attempting to read their own views of fairness into the Constitution, Carrington said. However, the Constitution gives the sitting president the obligation to fill any vacancy on the Supreme Court.

“If we’re really going to say the Constitution is at the top, and overrides all these other concerns or other personal preferences, really that should be, I think, the No. 1 thing we’re talking about,” he told Smith.

In response to Smith’s question whether or not Carrington has a preference for the next justice, Carrington noted that Trump’s pick, Amy Coney Barrett, had been in the running previously when Trump appointed Justice Brett Kavanaugh.

“I think there are lots of good [choices], but I think she would be the home run of the ones that are in the running,” Carrington said.