The authors of the US Constitution did not outline a two-party system. Nor did they imagine that a plan for reasonable checks and balances would become a tool to empower petty obstructionists.

What the framers established was a system of separated powers with three branches of government: executive, legislative, and judicial. In the event of a vacancy on the nation's highest court, the founding document explained that the president "shall nominate, and by and with the Advice and Consent of the Senate, shall appoint…Judges of the supreme Court."

The Constitution does not say that presidents may nominate justices. It says they shall do so.

The Constitution does not say that presidents are limited in this duty by the timing when a vacancy occurs. There is no footnote that says presidents shall only perform their duties in their first terms. Nor is there a footnote that says members of the Senate shall only provide appropriate advice and consent when a president is in his or her first term. And there is certainly no language that suggests that a president's nominee to the Court must parallel the ideology of the justice he or she would replace.