So why doesn’t Obama act on that “consent”? He is, after all, a constitutional scholar. Are you?
Hint: there is nothing in the constitution that refers to a vote.
Required? What happens to them if they don’t? If nothing happens, then they are not required.
Still, you are looking for advise and consent in a particular form. They are not “required” to adhere to your preferred form.
There are other examples in which the Senate did not even deign to vote to table a nomination but instead just ignored it.
There is even an example where a motion to consider a nomination could not proceed for lack of a Senator willing to second the motion - and that was a Whig controlled Senate voting on a nomination from President Tyler, a Whig. His own party stonewalled him. No vote.
This particular example was chosen due to a claim that the Founding fathers would have objected to the Garland treatment when it was in fact a feature of American politics from its very earliest days.
No matter how many times CNN*, Think Progress**, Media Matters***, or The Huffington Post**** claim that the Senate’s treatment of Garland is “unprecedented” it simply isn’t true without substantial qualification of the remark. And the media wonder why the public has lost confidence in them. :dubious:
- Cite “…most notably their unprecedented refusal to even give the President’s Supreme Court choice, Merrick Garland, a hearing.”
** Cite(video link) " The Unprecedented Obstruction Of Obama’s Supreme Court Pick"
*** Cite" Initial Reporting On Republican Obstructionism Downplayed Unprecedented Nature Or Ignored It Outright."
**** Cite" No sir, you cannot sue the Senate over its unprecedented obstruction of the president’s Supreme Court nominee."
OK. And I should care how things “look,” to you why, exactly?
Now, if you could point to some rule, law, regulation, or some other binding guidance that holds similarly, I’ll be interested. But since your only authority for this claim is how it “looks,” to you, I’m curious to understand your qualifications.
What are they?
How long are you going to keep trying the tactic of insisting something is true with no citation to any authority for the claim other than the fact you insist on it? Are you going to start stamping your foot and scowling cutely while saying it?
"Federal District Judge Gerhard A. Gesell ruled that the dismissal of Mr. Cox, in the absence of a finding of extraordinary impropriety as specified in the regulation establishing the special prosecutor’s office, was illegal. "
What part of that ruling implies that it is not a judgment on the merits?
What extraordinary impropriety did Cox engage in?
By that you mean subpoenaing the Nixon tapes? Then, no. You can no more fire a special prosecutor for investigating the thing they were specifically tasked to investigate than you can fire a police officer for arresting the mayor because he committed a crime despite the mayor ordering the police not to arrest him.
No, the senate didn’t do anything, that’s sort of the source of the complaint. The Republican party did. Sure they control the senate but there is a difference between the party in control of the senate saying something and the senate saying something.
Yes, they ought to vote. If they don’t, then they are in dereliction of their constitutional duties.
What does advice and consent mean? Advice and consent is not limited to supreme court nominations. We also see it in ratification of treaties and because of the supermajority voting requirement for ratifying treaties, we see that voting is an integral part of advice and consent. Other advice and consent requirement presumably only require a majority vote (subject to filibuster). Informed advice and consent usually means public hearings but could just as easily be private interviews.
“[The President] shall have Power, by and with the Advice and Consent of the Senate, to make Treaties, provided two thirds of the Senators present concur; and he shall nominate, and by and with the Advice and Consent of the Senate, shall appoint Ambassadors, other public Ministers and Consuls, Judges of the Supreme Court, and all other Officers of the United States, whose Appointments are not herein otherwise provided for, and which shall be established by Law: but the Congress may by Law vest the Appointment of such inferior Officers, as they think proper, in the President alone, in the Courts of Law, or in the Heads of Departments.”
That probably isn’t good enough for you to need my paypal account for that quadrillion dollars but there is a voting element to the advice and consent requirement.
It depends on who Trump nominates. If Trump engages in the culture war with his nominations, I don’t think the rust belt voters who elected him are going to be particularly happy about the focus on shit like gay wedding cakes and vaginal sonogram abortion requirements.
Did they vote to defer consideration of the nominee?
“The President] shall have Power, by and with the Advice and Consent of the Senate, to make Treaties, provided two thirds of the Senators present concur; and he shall nominate, and by and with the Advice and Consent of the Senate, shall appoint Ambassadors, other public Ministers and Consuls, Judges of the Supreme Court, and all other Officers of the United States, whose Appointments are not herein otherwise provided for, and which shall be established by Law: but the Congress may by Law vest the Appointment of such inferior Officers, as they think proper, in the President alone, in the Courts of Law, or in the Heads of Departments.”
There is a voting element to advice and consent. You can choose to read it some other way but most constitutional scholars do not think that advice and consent can be fulfilled with a middle finger from the majority leader.
The constitution also forbids them from questioning the federal debt.
What would happen to them if they said, they would not pay interest on the federal debt on debt held by hostile regimes like ISIS? Nothing. Does that mean that they are not required to refrain from questioning the national debt?
“provided two thirds of the Senators present concur”
Concur in that context means vote.
And most of these are also failures of the senate to perform its duty.
Noone is saying the republic falls if they don’t fulfill their duty to provide advice and consent. Sure, was political and the Democrats could have countered it politically but the Democrats were sooooooo sure that the Madonna Hillary was going to beat Trump that they decided to let the Republicans hang themselves. And now they are hoping beyond hope that a bunch of octagenarians on the court can live 4 to 8 more years.
We’ve spent the last nine months establishing that yes, in fact, the majority leader’s middle finger is all it takes for the Senate to withhold its advice and consent on a nominee. If it weren’t so, we would be have a Justice Garland right now.
He gave a list of 21 potential nominees before the election. Rust belt voters had ample opportunity to read the list and many of them voted for Trump. Do you think those 21 nominees represent a “focus on shit like gay wedding cakes and vaginal sonogram abortion requirements” that would leave those voters not particularly happy?
As has been pointed repeatedly, the Constitution does not require a vote on SCOTUS nominees.
Did you notice anything different about the Advice and Consent required for treaties vs. the Advice and Consent for SCOTUS nominees?
Regards,
Shodan
What do you mean by this? What could the Democrats have done to counter it “politically”? Do you mean win the election?
First you must establish what the Senate’s constitutional duties are. Then you must establish that voting is included within those duties. You haven’t done either of those things.
You start this paragraph with a question about the meaning of ‘advice and consent’ but you didn’t answer the question. You want it to mean a hearing, or a vote, or a private interview, or something - but really it means whatever the senate wants it to mean. The same section from*** Article II *** doesn’t mention any of these things.
And you have a cite for this? Two claims - that there is a voting element and that most constitutional scholars think a certain thing.
If you are taking my bet - I’ll accept installment payments, with interest of course.
Sure, but that probably falls beneath the outraged-enough-to-do-something-about-it threshold. I would guess that the vast majority of Rust Belt Trump supporters would either approve of someone like William Pryor, or disapprove, but not disapprove to the point of anything more than eye-rolling or a sigh and then going on with their lives. A lot of politics is about finding that middle spot whereby you can upset people by your actions but not enough to the point of them actually mobilizing to action about it.