The West Wing, the Senate, and “The Supremes” (Redux)

Lisa McElroy

Associate Professor at Drexel University Thomas R. Kline School of Law.

This Essay borrows a few lines from an essay the author wrote for Slate in the days immediately following Justice Antonin Scalia’s death. See Lisa T. McElroy, This West Wing Episode Predicted the Controversy around Scalia’s Replacement in Eerie Detail (Slate, Feb 16, 2016), online at http://www.slate.com/blogs/browbeat/2016/02/16/the_west_wing_episode_the_supremes_prefigured_the_controversy_around_scalia.html (visited May 13, 2016) (Perma archive unavailable).

TABLE OF CONTENTS

Or so said a talking head about Justice Antonin Scalia this spring, right? And then that pundit went on to say, “You go with [a real liberal] the Senate’s going to make the next year of your life a living hell.”3

You heard him quoted all over the place.

But, actually, these statements weren’t about the death of Scalia. Some folks in the executive branch said them twelve years ago.

3Lisa Wolfe, played by Deirdre Lovejoy, The West Wing, Season 5, Episode 17 (cited in note 1).