Mourners to pay respects Friday to late Justice Scalia

He also nodded at Scalia’s “originalist” interpretation of Constitution by arguing that the Supreme Court should decide through that prism.

On Thursday and Friday, the president spoke by phone with Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Kentucky, Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Chuck Grassley, R-Iowa, and Judiciary Committee Ranking Member Patrick Leahy, D-Vermont, about the prospects of a confirmation process for whomever Obama chooses to nominate, Earnest said.

Scalia’s casket arrived at the basilica after he lay in repose at the Supreme Court on Friday, where thousands of visitors came to honor one of the country’s most influential conservatives.

The family departed for a private burial at an undisclosed site immediately after the Mass. A memorial service for Scalia has been set for March 1 at a Washington hotel.

Given their political differences, it probably wouldn’t be appropriate for Obama to speak at Scalia’s funeral, and the family might not want him to participate in the ceremony.

His baritone voice silenced and his mighty pen relinquished, Scalia will lie in repose all day and into the night so fellow justices, law clerks, Supreme Court employees and Americans who revered or simply respected him can pay homage.

While questions continue to surround a potential replacement for Antonin Scalia, it appears the late Supreme Court Justice had already picked his successor.

Scalia, who was 79, is just the third justice in the past 60 years to die while still on the bench: Chief Justice William Rehnquist died in 2005, and in 1964, Justice Robert H. Jackson died of a heart attack. But it was united Friday in grief over the passing of the sometimes cantankerous and always colorful conservative justice who served on the nation’s highest court for almost three decades.

Another visitor was Emily Weatherspoon, a senior at St. Mary’s School who said she respects Scalia as a Supreme Court justice.

The death of conservative Supreme Court justice Antonin Scalia over the weekend has deepened the partisan rift in Washington. But Gardner also indicated there might be one scenario in which Senate Republicans might back a White House nominee.

Earnest said those calls were a sign that Obama takes seriously the Senate’s constitutional role of giving advice and consent to the president’s judicial nominees.

The Obama administration will be represented at the funeral by Vice President Biden and his wife, Dr. Jill Biden.