Justice Antonin Scalia lies in repose at US Supreme Court

President Barack Obama and first lady Michelle Obama pauses as they pay their respects beside the casket of Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia as it lies in repose in the Great Hall of the Supreme Court in Washington, Friday, Feb. 19, 2016. AP Photo

WASHINGTON, United States—The body of justice Antonin Scalia was transferred Friday to the US Supreme Court, where President Barack Obama and hundreds of officials paid tribute to the conservative icon as he lies in repose.

Scalia’s flag-draped casket was installed at 9:30 a.m. (1430 GMT) in the Supreme Court’s Great Hall, after court police ceremoniously carried it up the building’s iconic steps.

Obama was among the thousands of people who are expected to pay their respect to the 79-year-old justice, who died of an apparent heart attack.

READ: US SC Justice Antonin Scalia dead at 79

The president and First Lady Michelle Obama, dressed in black, entered the Great Hall of the Supreme Court and hands clasped paid their respects by the casket.

They then stood for a moment in front of a portrait of Scalia, flanked by floral arrangements of red, white and blue, with soft chandelier light bathing the marble room.

The casket rests on the Lincoln Catafalque, which was loaned to the court by Congress for the ceremony.

Scalia’s death Saturday in Texas plunged the Supreme Court into uncertainty, leaving what had been a conservative-dominated body evenly divided in a year of blockbuster cases—on abortion, affirmative action, immigration and President Barack Obama’s health care law.

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It also set off an epic election-year battle over Scalia’s successor, whose appointment could tip the body to a liberal majority with the potential to reshape American life far into the future.

Scalia’s coffin was placed on the same support, known as a catafalque, that was used for president Abraham Lincoln, after he was assassinated in 1865.

The eight remaining justices observed a moment of silence, standing in the same order they sit in the Supreme Court.

Appointed to the Supreme Court by president Ronald Reagan in 1986, Scalia championed the legal theory of originalism, which views the meaning of the Constitution as fixed at the time it was ratified, in 1788.

According to this view, there is no doubt as to the validity of the death penalty and the right to bear arms.

A Catholic father of nine children, Scalia was opposed to abortion and gay marriage as new rights that would have been unfathomable to the writers of the Constitution.

One of his sons, a priest, led a brief religious ceremony before the public was allowed into the building.

Obama is to pay tribute before the coffin in the afternoon.

The president has been criticized for saying he will not attend the justice’s funeral Saturday at the Basilica of the National Shrine of the Immaculate Conception in Washington. However Vice President Joe Biden, himself a Catholic, will attend.

Scalia’s death immediately triggered intense election-year controversy, with Republican presidential candidates calling on Obama to leave it to his successor to appoint the next justice.

Obama has said he is determined to nominate a replacement for Scalia, although he can expect push-back from the Republican-controlled Senate, where his candidate will need support from a majority for confirmation.