The death of Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia was answered within hours by the Republicans, both in the Senate and on the campaign trail, that they would not even allow a nominee by President Barack Obama to receive courtesy visits in the Senate, much less a formal hearing and vote.

They informed the president the vacancy should be filled by the next president.

President Obama answered with the statement he plans on making a nomination.

Without even the veneer of pretending the vacancy should be filled by a person of proper judicial temperament, both sides are ready for a political power contest in which only one can prevail.

Why is this vacancy a cause for all out political war? The reasons are not complicated.

First, the text of the Constitution says the Constitution is the supreme law of the land and all government institutions, from the president to the congress to the governors and state legislatures, must comply with the meaning of the Constitution.

This supremacy requires that all laws and government policies must be in compliance with the Constitution.

Second, the text also declares the federal judiciary, the Supreme Court at its apex, has the authority to hear and decide all legal questions raised under the Constitution and the laws passed pursuant to it.

Third, the Supreme Court and the judiciary has held since 1803 that it is the final arbiter on what the law – the Constitution – means and requires.

Put simply, what the court says the Constitution says is final; subject to the court reversing itself or amending the text of the Constitution itself.

Fourth, ever since the 1930s, if not the middle 1800s, America has translated policy and moral debates from political questions into legal ones.

Once translated, the judiciary – the muse of the Constitution – provides a definitive answer.

Once the answer is issued, the policy dispute is removed from the political sphere for subsequent debate and change as political fortunes change from one election to another.

The court, for good or ill, has become the final arbiter of American social and political policies and debates.

The practical impact of this on our political system is that major political issues are now decided by partisans convincing five out of nine justices on the court rather than the president and 535 members of Congress or 50 governors and thousands of state legislatures.

Do the math, which one is easier?

The examples of social policy battles that have gone to the court are endless.

They include abortion, homosexual marriage, the death penalty for sex offenders, prayer in school, the posting of the Ten Commandments in public buildings, affirmative action, the Affordable Care Act, life imprisonment for juveniles, the meaning of the First and Second Amendments, and limitations on financial election contributions.

Scalia represented, on the court, the aversion of removing policy disputes from the process of democracy by constitutionalizing them.

The battle over the membership of the court is not over the defense of the Constitution, the proper interpretation of the law, selecting lawyers with the proper temperament, or any other platitude.

The battle is over control over the selection of lawyers who are most likely to make decisions that support a desired result of the various political interests that will bring their policy and political desires to the court in the guise of legal disputes.

Presidents, in part, define their legacy and project their presence into the future of American politics through judicial appointments.

With the death of Justice Scalia, the control of the court by justices who are more prone to produce results that please conservatives has moved from five to four.

If Obama were to successfully appoint even a moderate justice, the conservatives would lose control of the court.

If a Democrat wins the White House, conservatives would lose control of the court, and the issues they will decide, for a decade.

With the distinction between legal policymaking and judicial decision-making lost on the American political system, the truth is simple.

He who controls the judiciary, rules the world.

That, of course, is worth fighting for.

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Editor’s note: Arthur H. Garrison is an assistant professor of criminal justice at Kutztown University.