The sudden, tragic death of Justice Antonin Scalia has thrown a huge spotlight on the Supreme Court. As conservative columnist Thomas Sowell writes today, “at this crucial juncture in the history of the nation — with 5-to-4 Supreme Court decisions determining what kind of country America will be — Scalia’s death can be catastrophic in its consequences, depending on who is chosen to be his successor. ”

GOP candidate Sen. Ted Cruz, who clerked at the Supreme Court and argued nine cases before the High Court, has shifted the focus of his campaign this week to emphasize his experience. He claims he is the only candidate with “the background, the principle, the character, the judgment” to find and fight for a solid conservative to replace Scalia.

This past fall, at the North Texas Presidential Forum in Plano, Texas, Cruz shared how he’s spent his career fighting against judicial activism. In this brief clip, he explains that Republican Supreme Court justices end up voting liberal because the presidents who appointed them shied away from “expending the political capital” necessary to get true conservatives on the bench. Instead, they select jurists like David Souter and John Roberts who do not have a deep trove of conservative decisions that Democrats can attack. Said Cruz, “Every single time we’ve gone with a judicial nominee that doesn’t have a paper trail it’s turned into an utter disaster.”

He promises this would not be the case if he were elected.