“The totally unexpected loss of Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia is a massive setback for the conservative movement and our COUNTRY.” Note then GOP presidential candidate Donald Trump in his tweet on Scalia’s death in February, 2016, capitalized country. Trump made sure one and all knew that the death of the ultra-conservative lightening rod, Justice Scalia was not just a setback for conservatives but the nation. Trump’s mourning for Scalia was not campaign hyperbole or a cheap effort to capitalize on his death to ingratiate himself with the ultra-right. On more than one occasion on the campaign trail, he didn’t hesitate when asked who he most admired on the High Court. His answer was immediate: Judge Scalia. Clarence Thomas was a close second in his pantheon of most admired SCOTUS justices. Trump made clear his hero worship of Scalia was based squarely on the fact that the long sitting judge on the bench was the embodiment of hard-line, take-no-prisoners ultra-conservative, strict constructionist principles. But Scalia was more than a rightist ideologue on the court. He was hawk like in pouncing on any issue that even remotely strayed from his rigid view of conservative legal principles. He never shirked from cajoling, hectoring, and ruminating on any and every point of constitutional law as he interpreted it. His self-appointed mission was to stiffen the spine of conservatives on the bench on the big-ticket issues whether they be torpedoing voting rights to upholding corporate power.So, Trump’s quest was to make sure that Scalia’s judicial legacy would be preserved at all costs on the Supreme Court. Trump understood that another Scalia could potentially enshrine the ultra-conservative position on all issues of law and public policy for years, maybe even decades, to come. In Scalia’s Shadow: The Trump Supreme Court, political analyst Earl Ofari Hutchinson assesses the devastating impact that another Scalia on the Supreme Court will have on law and public policy. And why Trump in his homage to Scalia at his death capitalized COUNTRY.