SCOTUS-Watch: It's Gorsuch!

[Attorney General & PPT Dwarven Dragon]

We've already established that the president doesn't get to fill Supreme Court vacancies for his entire term.  Shouldn't we just wait until the next president takes office to fill this one?

That only applies during the last year of a president's term. Or at least, that was the official republican party line.

[Attorney General & PPT Dwarven Dragon]

We've already established that the president doesn't get to fill Supreme Court vacancies for his entire term.  Shouldn't we just wait until the next president takes office to fill this one?

That only applies during the last year of a president's term. Or at least, that was the official republican party line.

Is there any real reason not to extend it? No. There is none, because there was no real reason for the Republican party line in the first place. (And no, nor for whatever whataboutery the Democrats did at whatever point either.)

Well, to be fair, even though it was invented in the heat of the moment with no possible opportunity to check that it was accurate at all, the "Let's not do SCOTUS stuff in the last year, it hasn't happened in a very long time for a reason" thing ended up having an O.K. historical basis. The only remotely recent time that a SCOTUS nominee was approved in the final year of a president's term was '88, and that doesn't exactly match the Scalia case because the vacancy originated in '87 (i.e. not the last year) and only took until '88 to fill because H.W's first choice was rejected. Before that, you have to go back to FDR. R's also got lucky when they learned that Biden had written something in '92 that could be used as evidence that the whole thing wasn't just some partisan idea.

As far as whether the republicans would have taken the same line had Scalia died in 2015, that's an open question. It is easier to find examples of second-to-last-year confirmations than it is to find examples of last-year confirmations - We have Thomas in '91, Stevens in '75, Rehnquist and Powell in '71, and of course there's no Biden paper to the rescue here. Also, McConnell did seem to have to do some level of whipping his caucus into shape - I seem to recall Grassley being somewhat open to hearings for a couple days and then reversing that position, and then Hatch had that whole line where he specifically cited Garland as a fine man who Obama would never nominate, but by the time Garland was actually nominated the party had him under control. Murkowski basically dodged the question for a while before definitively coming out against Garland in April, though she still met with him afterward to "discuss issues important to Alaska". Then there was that hot moment where Jerry Moran of all people said hearings should be held, only to take it back a week later. It's impossible to know whether any of these people would have been more "anti-McConnell" if he didn't have the last year line to fall back on. If it was 2015 and not 2016 when Scalia died, perhaps there would have been more of a resistance to a "don't approve anyone" proposal, one that couldn't be quieted down (as) easily. It's impossible to know.


Of course, there were those few choice senators who, late in the campaign after everyone had basically forgotten Garland existed, floated the idea of never approving any Clinton nominee. But that was never the official view of the republican caucus and shouldn't be taken as such.
 

[Attorney General & PPT Dwarven Dragon]

I want to see the nuclear option extended to the sc after Schumer flings his feces over a nomination that will not change the balance of the court

I don't know why McConnell is even pretending he's going to keep the filibuster. Like c'mon man, we know you by now. Just get it over with.

Idk he's probably giving Schumer enough rope to hang himself with Pryor or Gorsuch(who seem to be the leading candidates) so that he seems justified in extending the nuclear option

If you think Chuck fighting a homoaphobe like Pryor and then like a complete hypocrite Mitch kills the FB the first time it's used will blow up on Schumer then please go ahead

Accusing anyone you don't like of being homophobic, misogynistic, or racist lost it's effectiveness years ago

Correct, people are tired of the left-wing bullsh**t bingo and everyone knows that it doesn't matter whom a GOP President is nominating cause the Democrats will play the name-calling game against everyone.

Pryor is the real Deal, do it Trump!

It still needs to be brought up though. Most Americans see each other as equals, and I really believe that. You can't delegitimize any voting bloc in America because how diverse we are to the core. We are a melting pot and any smart politician will say, "Hey. We live in a great country where we except anyone. You want to live in my state and produce, I agree with that. Though, the minute you want to infringe on my rights... Be ready. I'll tell you that me personally doesn't like abortion but it should be a women's right to choose. Because at the end of the day, do we want a society that's like... "In Iowa, we went pro-life but if you cross the border to Illinois they'll give you anything you want." No.

We don't want an underground market for that, I know a lot of women that have told me that abortion is not only a hard decision it might be the only one. It has to do with economics or the fact that this dude isn't responsible. We need responsible sex-education, because Abortion is a hard term to go with. Not only for the mother but the father, though... And I am 100% on board with this, you don't know what it's like to be a woman and make that decision. I feel if we had responsible sex-education then we'd be ok with it. I've heard every-side of the story and I don't think anyone is wrong. If we promoted condoms, birth control and plan-b then we're good as a society.

At the end of the day though, I've never heard a woman say and I can be completely wrong in a magnanimous relationship can say, "I'm glad we had that abortion." That's crazy talk, it's about education of the mind and society.

If you look through some of the stories on NARAL's site, you will see women that were quite happy to get their abortion and don't even hint at it being a hard decision. There are people who actually like, and perhaps even love, abortion.

[Attorney General & PPT Dwarven Dragon]

Sandoval would be a sound justice, but he's basically a Kennedy conservative, meaning the chance that Trump would appoint him is basically zero.

I would never support confirming Pryor. Sykes and Gorsuch...let's hold the hearing and see what they say.

[Attorney General & PPT Dwarven Dragon]

Not gonna make much difference with a Scalia vacancy. Watch Senate elections in 2018 and presidential race in 2020 for Kennedy and Ginnsberg replacement

Ginsberg will die before Nov. 2020. She might make it to Jan. 2020 though, which would make the appointment fall under the last year rule, which dems need to enforce.

[Attorney General & PPT Dwarven Dragon]

Not gonna make much difference with a Scalia vacancy. Watch Senate elections in 2018 and presidential race in 2020 for Kennedy and Ginnsberg replacement

Ginsberg will die before Nov. 2020. She might make it to Jan. 2020 though, which would make the appointment fall under the last year rule, which dems need to enforce.

I thought you supported all actions that could overturn Roe v. Wade?  Didn't you agree with me that "the ends justify the means" is justified for ending abortion?

I generally agree with that philosophy, but I also agree that it's only fair to bind Trump to the same rules Obama was bound to here - which was no SCOTUS justices in a presidential election year. While I am strongly pro-life, I am not single-issue by any means - Garland was, holistically, a sound choice, and should have been confirmed.

[Attorney General & PPT Dwarven Dragon]

What exactly does it mean when folks say that this or that judge is "pro-life"?
Does that mean that said judges interpret the word "person" in the Due Process Clause and the Equal Protection Clause as referring to fetuses?
Do judges who we call "pro-life" interpret the Constitution to mean that abortion must be banned, or else pre-born fetuses are being denied due process and equal protection of the laws?
George F. Will once said that any judge who would interpret the Constitution that way is just as arrogant and activist as the Supreme Court Justices who handed down Roe v. Wade in the first place.

No one should be appointed to the U.S. Supreme Court because they are "pro-life," or because they are conservative, liberal, or moderate. Nor should they be appointed because they are "pro-choice," or because they are in favor of affirmative action, opposed to it, or because of how they feel about gun control, or campaign finance laws. They should not be appointed because of their ideology, but because they are objective. Back on March 3rd of last year, I read an article that said President Obama was including Judge Sri Srinivasan on the list of possible nominees for Scalia's vacant seat, and the article said Judge Srinivasan "has a deep respect for the need for strict objectivity and impartiality." I was very strongly hoping that Obama would nominate him.

Overturning Roe v. Wade would not automatically institute a federal ban on abortion. Instead it would return the issue to its rightful place to be decided - the legislative branch.

[Attorney General & PPT Dwarven Dragon]

^ I saw something like that. Some woman who (apparently) worked in the Obama administration praising Garland for 30 sec. I feel like there may have been something for Garland (but more of a generic #weneednine message), but definitely don't remember this being a thing for Kagan or Sotomayor.

[Attorney General & PPT Dwarven Dragon]

I argue the Courts have been politicized too long. But then again, we started the road to hell with the Democratic Party. The New Dealers started with trying to swing the Court to the Left, and it should be no shock the Reaganites began to value the Courts.

But that's all water under the bridge compared to 2016.

But Merrick Garland, to me, represented a nuclear option in that a vacancy came up in February 2016 and was not filled until February 2017. While Scalia's death was highly unfortunate, the partisan reasoning to leave a Court seat open for a full year stretches political norms past their breaking point. If this is the rationale - and the fig leaf of it being an election year being exactly that - then why shouldn't an opposition party in the majority hold up a Court appointment for 2 years? 3 years? What if a Republican President had a Democratic Senate and a court vacancy occurred?

There's a stretching of political norms and there's a breaking point. Garland was a breaking point. The President nominated him. We have a duty to have a fully staffed Court. The postponing of a Court vote in the name of partisan control of the Court was in a sense going beyond mere politics and validated the "anything goes."

Robert Bork was rejected, yes. I don't like it too much but the Senate fulfilled their Constitutional duty to "advise and consent." They looked at the nomination and they rejected it. Plain and simple. Senators are not required to rubber stamp a Court nominee. They're required to use their judgment as elected representatives to evaluate nominees and give them an up and down vote. Had McConnell said "we'll give Garland an up and down vote," and they failed him, I would have been happy. Instead, the Senate refused to even give him a courtesy hearing and held the seat open for a year.

I admit, I cheered this strategy a year ago as a partisan Republican. Since then, seeing the partisan gyre that has widened with Donald Trump's election and the "anything goes" mentality of the Republican Party (and now, the corresponding response from the Democratic Party, who rightfully believe that they have to respond in kind to stay viable) has made me reevaluate how far we go to break political norms. They may not be Constitutional, or whatnot, but they undergird how we function as a republic.

Indeed, Donald Trump was elected on that basis - that anything goes, and that political norms no longer matter in the name of "winning." The name of the game is to win, even if we stop being a republic in the process and our political divisions become so intense and bitter that like Rome, we require a monarch to rule us. This is exactly - I know it's cliched - what happened in ancient Rome. Norms were slowly stripped away as partisan factionalism intensified, ending in Augustus' rule.

Returning to my original point, now that the fig leaf has been used, now every Senate majority can ruthlessly stop an opposition president by holding open an Court seat for as long as they want - without consequences. That precedent has now been set - and the Court's balance is now considered fair game and no political norms now govern how we fill Supreme Court nominations.

We've crossed a Rubicon and unfortunately, to restore it, we're going to need one party to decisively defeat the other party and restore the political norms that make this republic functional.

Trump should have bucked his base, and risked his presidency to nominate Garland in the name of restoring political norms. That he didn't is understandable but it shows that our system's norms are broken and we need to address that.

I fully admit that, had Hillary Clinton won and Republicans kept the Senate, I would have advocated to not confirm any judges and justices for the entire four years.  Ending abortion is too important for that!

Speaking as a pro-lifer, the republic matters vastly more than abortion.

Nothing that man could accomplish is more important than ending abortion.  And, the USA is in no danger, anyway.

What about all the preventable deaths caused by Trump and the congressional Republican's policies?  What about the senseless loss of life that would occur if Trump starts a completely unnecessary war (nuclear or otherwise)?  If you're truly pro-life, I don't see how you can reconcile that with voting for someone like Trump...unless of course you're simply a partisan hack who only cares about "protecting the sanctity of life" when it suits your party.

The line of thinking is basically that ending abortion is most important because it makes sure every life gets a chance, while everything else is secondary because it affects what happens after the baby leaves the womb, when the mother can no longer legally kill it, so the sense of urgency is less. (I could be slightly off here). It's not a philosophy that I use when voting, as my 2016 presidential selection should make clear, but ER is not the only person I've heard of who holds to such a philosophy.