We have been heartened to see Americans of all political stripes come forward and echo our call for both sides to live up to their responsibility to ensure that we have a fully-functioning Supreme Court. These civic leaders and other distinguished voices have explained that this vacancy should not and does not have to be one more partisan political food fight.
Jon Huntsman and Joseph Lieberman: The Republican SCOTUS Blockade Is ‘Not Acceptable’
Mike Schilling
Mike has been a software engineer far longer than he would like to admit. He has strong opinions on baseball, software, science fiction, comedy, contract bridge, and European history, any of which he's willing to share with almost no prompting whatsoever.
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on Youngsters Make Merry at Evanston Country Club Christmas PartyHester Walrath (1898-1971) went on to attend Northwestern University, marry a businessman, and have…
on Open Mic for the week of 12/16/2024So the "CR" of 1500 pages, given to members 24 hours before the vote, and which did all kinds of thi…
on Open Mic for the week of 12/16/2024Do you not understand the irony of speaking positively about banning political parties in the same b…
on Open Mic for the week of 12/16/2024I suppose we could blame the townspeople for not showing up the umpteenth time the shepherd boy crie… on Open Mic for the week of 12/16/2024A small backlash? If the election were held today they would be the 2nd biggest party in the Bundest…
on Open Mic for the week of 12/16/2024I have no idea why pointing out that Na.zis were elected legitimately is relevant to this discussion… on Open Mic for the week of 12/16/2024No, I'm pointing out that you find 'Trump is Hitler' more absurd than 'These people are Na.zis', so…
on Open Mic for the week of 12/16/2024The local paper referenced this work, partially paid for by the feds, this morning. Some of the phas… on Open Mic for the week of 12/16/2024And I will, again, point you that you are the first to mention Hitler, You sure about that? Maybe re… on A Note from EmHe's one of the AIs. https://claude.ai/new I make him read my essays and then I argue with him about…
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OMG OMG OMG it’s a crisis!
Where were they for the last crisis? Where were these guys when the US was torturing folks?
Wow an ex senator and vp candidate and a rich fat cat insist that the country will go to hell in a hand basket. Yawn. The only salient point is that if the repubs pull this now, the dems will and will extend the envelop, when the sides are reversed. Hasn’t that been the way it’s been going for decades?
Yawn.Report
The Supreme Court can function passably with fewer justices. The Court, in contradistinction to any other federal court, controls the dimensions of its caseload. The Republic will be uninjured if they elect to rule on 3.6% of the cases filed rather than 4%.Report
This rationale didn’t play any better when FDR trotted it out, dude.Report
But ultimately, FDR lost the battle but won the war.Report
He got to undermine the Constitutional limits on federal power anyway.Report
Well then I would recommend that Art and the Senate Republicans start pushing a program with as much popular support as FDR had in 1937. That way their constitutional power play will work and nobody will care that their line about the Supreme Court’s caseload is transparent BS.Report
is transparent BS.
Keep on projecting.Report
What ‘rationale’? He advocated expanding the court. I’m pointing out that the argument that Huntsman is flogging (that we need a 9th justice RIGHT NOW) is nonsense. Because it is.Report
We may not need a ninth justice, but GOP posturing that there’s some kind of precedent for a president not nominating a Supreme Court justice in his last year is pure bunk.Report
What happened to Abe Fortas? And what do you think Earl Warren was up to with his contingent resignation?Report
The Court, in contradistinction to any other federal court, controls the dimensions of its caseload.
How is that fact relevant to the number of justices sitting on the bench? Presumably each of them researches each case, so by that metric the case-load of a court of One would be the same as a court of 13, no?Report
You need 4 SCOTUS peeps to grant cert. (Edit – for the most part) If anything, the vacancy helps the liberal bloc because it means Kennedy (and maybe sometimes Roberts) must agree to each and every case the conservative bloc wants to hear. The liberal bloc has been more ‘solid’ throughout the years, and especially since Souter retired, so presumably Garland isn’t going to change the marginal cert calc by much.Report
The composition of opinions is parceled out.Report
Jon Huntsman, the former Governor of Utah, and Joseph Lieberman, a former U.S. Senator for Connecticut, are the Co-Chairs of No Labels.
You mean they’re making a public point of vacuity? Do tell…Report
The nonchalance over this unprecedented action by the GOP seems to make an incorrect assumption that this action will occur in isolation. Unfortunately, it is likely to mean that no nomination from the opposition party can ever be confirmed, and there’s also no reason it won’t spread to other federal courts.Report
it is likely to mean that no nomination from the opposition party can ever be confirmed, and there’s also no reason it won’t spread to other federal courts.
Isn’t that already the case with Obama’s lower court appointments? I seem to recall that as of a few years ago only something like 60% of them had been filled?
Also, I wonder what role the Bush admin’s very intentional attempt to appoint conservative religious judges plays in the current manifestation of Both Sides Do It rhetoric, given that the only Side currently leaning over the obstructionist gunwales is the GOP.Report
Yes, the GOP has definitely slowed down there as well. The last 2 years of Bush’s term, when the Democrats controlled the Senate, they confirmed 10 justices to the appeals courts and over 50 to the district courts. The current number for the last 2 years of Obama’s term are 2 appeals and 14 district.
Norms are there for a reason, and breaking them like this is not good for the country.Report
But don’t take David’s word for that. Listen to Chief Justice Rehnquist:
“The Senate is surely under no obligation to confirm any particular nominee, but after the necessary time for inquiry it should vote him up or down. In the latter case, the president can send up another nominee.”
“Some current nominees have been waiting a considerable time for a Senate Judiciary Committee vote or a final floor vote,” Rehnquist said. “The Senate confirmed only 17 judges in 1996 and 36 in 1997, well under the 101 judges it confirmed in 1994.”
BSDI is always thrown up as a smokescreen, but it’s only one party that continually pulls this crap.Report
I do not care what Chief Justice Rehnquist had to say concerning federal trial and intermediate appellate judges. He had his interest as supervisor of the federal court system. None of his implicit concerns are at stake here and making his job easier is certainly of no concern to anyone not working in his office.Report
In other words, don’t bother you with facts.Report
Norms are there for a reason, and breaking them like this is not good for the country.
Waal, get in your maginificent time machine and get your tuchus back to 1937 and clue ’em all in.Report
You mean ‘unprecedented actions’ (you know, like :”Landmark decisions” ) are bad things? Do tell…Report
What struck me about this was the phrase “both sides”. Apparently, naming the party that has adamantly refused to do its job would count as a micro-aggression.Report
Yeah, what?
Nevertheless, the fact that both of these guys are ex-somethings leads me to conclude that partisanship is even more of a problem than I had previously thought.Report
It’s not they’re job to do anything at all to assist BO, the fancies of partisan Democrats notwithstanding.Report
Confirming a Supreme Court justice is not “assisting” the President. They’re not doing him a solid. It is part of a well-functioning government. They may not be duty-bound to do so insofar as there are direct, tangible consequences for not. But their willful refusal is both unprecedented and damaging to our country on a number of levels, creating real consequences they will hopefully be called to answer for.Report
Unprecedented? If the speaker had kept his mouth shut on his plan, delayed hearings for several months, maybe held one, and let the time run out, it would have been “business as usual”. the only real difference I see is someone actually said “we’re not doing jack on any of his nominees”.Report
Sure. But they didn’t do that. They said that Obama shouldn’t even nominate and that they wouldn’t even hold hearings. What is the longest a seat has been vacant? If they follow through on their plan and his seat is vacant 11+ months, would that not be unprecedented?Report
Meh, Congress hasn’t been doing it’s job for decades. I no longer call every new development “unprecedented”. How many decades does “unprecedented” need to go to “SOP”?Report
Confirming a Supreme Court justice is not “assisting” the President.
Let go of my leg, Kazzy.Report
You know that isn’t actually an argument, right?Report
You realize that your original remark was a silly nonsense statement?Report
How is this “damaging” and on what levels? What are the “real consequences?” The Dems said the same thing about a gov’t shutdown but the world didn’t end when the gov’t shut down. Sounds more like fear mongering to me.Report
The ‘real consequences’ would be that partisan Democrats do not get what they want, which he fancies is ‘damaging’.Report
Can you please explain Breton Woods II to me?Report
Oh please, AD. This latest GOP nonsense is all about giving Obama the finger and nothing else.Report
The notion that he deserves better is fanciful.
That aside, the two parties have a standing dispute over the role of the court, and the role the court seizes is determined by its composition.
The Republicans are not obligated to roll over and play dead to please the opposition, or to hold pro-forma hearings to meet your pro-forma objections.Report
“The notion that he deserves better is fanciful.”
You saying it over and over doesn’t make it true. Demonstrate why Obama, the twice elected President of these United States, deserves no better than a middle finger.Report
Sorry, he gets the middle finger. If he wants better, he’ll have to behave better.Report
Why, because Art doesn’t like him, of course. That’s the entire foundation around which Art’s alternate reality is built. Haven’t you figured that out yet?Report
Some of us have figured out that whatever subjective impressions and tastes can do, they do not put you in an ‘alternate reality’.
Contemplating just how it was that Douglas Shulman should think to tell a congressional committee that his curiously extensive meeting schedule at the White House was a function of such things as ‘the Easter Egg Roll” implicates more than subjective impressions. Sadly, that’s the reality we live in.
BO’s burned too many bridges in his time in office to salvage anything with the other 50% of the electorate. The best he can do is retire to Honolulu, get a job selling real estate, and figure that if he’s quiet people will forget how repellent he was and figure that the alignments of this nation’s history professors being what they are, it’ll take 90 years before they slice him to pieces.Report
Suppose the GOP had voted to double the size of the court in 2005 and then confirmed 9 more Federalist society-approved justices. Would that have been illegitimate? If not, why not?Report
Perfectly in keeping with the delegated powers of Congress. Legitimate.
For some time, people have appreciated the value of appellate courts as referees. You and I both know that, push comes to shove, they aren’t, even if partisan Democrats and faux-libertarians from Michigan wish to maintain they reliably are as artifice comes in handy now and again. In point of fact, there really is not anything short of ordering drone strikes on Ruth Bader Ginsburg’s house which would be illegitimate in any sense of the word. That’s the house you live in. If you wanted to live in a different one, you should’a built it. Tootles.Report
You gotta admit, No Labels is pretty much the worst.Report
Man, have I got a label for Lieberman…Report
Unacceptable!Report
Adventure time is such fun.Report
Well whether it’s unacceptable is up to the voters and the electorate it seems. It’s certainly both legal and constitutional.Report
It’s not like I’ve ever heard Republicans complain about people who want to be paid for not working.Report
Oh it’s massively hypocritical and nakedly partisan but it’s legal.Report
You fancy that every single member of the Senate is on the judiciary committee and has no other work to do?Report
Hmm, if I can think of a less convincing pair of spokesmen for… any issue involving partisan politics, in the US, it’s gotta be Lieberman and Huntsman.Report
Ruh roh! Looks like Scotto’s conservative fear of the unseen may be something after all. I swear, American politics can be so short sighted sometimes.
http://www.nytimes.com/2016/03/30/us/politics/friedrichs-v-california-teachers-association-union-fees-supreme-court-ruling.htmlReport
Meh, the article has “provisional” all over it. As the writer writes, “although 4-4 decisions mean an issue remains open and could return to the court in short order.”
Time to panic!Report