A McCain staffer is trying to put the cat back in the bag:
Suuuure. :dubious:
Hillary won’t be able to do anything Obama can’t do right now. Until the voters give a shit about this situation (and they sure seem to have forgotten it for now, as far as I can tell), there is no recourse. The only solution to the problem is for voters to elect Senators who will do their jobs and work with the President to put Justices on the Court.
Personally, while the move to completely ignore Garland’s nomination is unprecedented, I don’t think this is as big a deal as others do. One, because the voters don’t care. As soon as they care, this problem will go away, but not until then. Two, the reason they don’t care is that there is no upside to rushing this appointment. Liberals are happy with a liberal majority on the court, and for tied cases to revert to their (usually more liberal) lower court rulings, and conservatives know that anyone Obama or Clinton nominates will make the court even more liberal than that, so they’re cool with waiting as long as possible. Also, I know I said “do their jobs” in the preceding paragraph, but I think stonewalling a Judicial appointment is well within their rights as lawmakers according to the Constitution. The President gets veto power over bills passed by Congress, and the Senate gets veto power over the President’s court appointments. If Obama cared enough, he could throw nominee after nominee at the Senate until he found one they’d consider. But he’s cool with the status quo, too.
About the only people really inconvenienced here are the surviving members of the Supreme Court, who have more work to do and less help doing it, and Merrick Garland himself, who is sitting on his thumbs and being used as a pawn.
The most she can do is read a list of all those who claimed they wanted to wait until after the election, then call them on the lie.
Congress can override a presidential veto. Is there an equivalent presidential power in the case of Supreme Court nominees?
Recess Appointment, but it’s only temporary.
The voters might have forgotten about it, but John McCain has just done us the favor of reminding them, as well as making it clear that they should act now instead of waiting two or four years.
If the Republicans do hold the Senate and refuse to hold hearings for any nominee, I think that would be a constitutional crisis. At that point I think what I would support is beating up every Republican senator with that in their campaigns. Every election for senator (except maybe in California :p) should be about how that particular Republican senator is working to destroy the nation and a vote for that senator is a vote to destroy the USA.
Random SCOTUS question:
The last chief justice was determined because Rehnquist was the CJ and he died, so Bush appointed Roberts. Does the president have the power to force a sitting CJ into a lower position and promote another justice to the CJ position? If so, has this been done before? Is it normal? And if yes and President Clinton does it, how much shit would the GOP give her over it or will it blow over pretty quickly?
I am a Democrat, but I can see that Republicans will want to continue to vote for Republicans.
Technically speaking, it’s probably not a constitutional crisis – it’s a political deadlock that voters must ultimately decide to resolve. They’re the ones who are voting to accept this, and yet many of them will be the ones who will say how disgusted they are at the system. Actually the system can work quite well – it’s the voters who keep fucking it up. How can 40 percent of voters knowingly, eyes-wide-open actively support someone who, in all likelihood, is a sexual predator? “Yeah but Hillary’s emails” – right like putting emails on the wrong server is anywhere close to sexual predation and pathological lying.
I digress –
The real point is, there’s actually nothing in the Constitution that requires 9 justices. The Senate can decide it doesn’t want to confirm. It has that power. Just as the president can decide he wants to veto any and all bills that come out of congress. The people are supporting the senators who do this. If people want less gridlock, if they want those justices, they should vote for a more democratic senate.
So? If voters care, their representatives will. The stonewalling Senators will either watch the polls and change their tune or get primaried in the next election year by a Republican who will. This isn’t a problem that can become permanent as I see it, unless the will of the people really is that the Judicial Branch of the federal government just whither away and die.
The Consiutution specifies a “chief justice” so the traditional interpretation is that a president nominates a person specifically to be chief justice. And, since no judge can be removed from their position except by impeachment, the chief justice stays chief.
When Roberts was originally nominated, he was going to replace the retiring Sandra Day O’Connor, and when Rehnquist died suddenly his nomination was withdrawn. A new one, for him to be Chief Justice, was then made. Associate and chief are different jobs, so if Roberts were to leave, Obama couldn’t say that Kagan was the new Chief, it would require a new nomination/confirmation.
(If the proposed new Chief is already on the Court this is usually pro forma, but not always.)
Republican voters will continue voting for Republican Representatives and a Republican President. They won’t change their minds on guns, abortion and a Republican Supreme Court.
Hell, we fought a Civil War over the South losing control of the House of Representatives.
In parliamentary systems in such cases of ongoing deadlock the PM can call a “double dissolution”, dissolve both houses and call a snap election. The idea being that in such cases the party that is obstructing will lose some seats, or the obstructing party will gain the leader ship, either way the problem is solved.
Eg see Australia 1975 Consitutional Crisis.
1975 Australian constitutional crisis - Wikipedia (this was more complicated, it wasn’t called by the PM, but it’s an example of a double dissolution solving a deadlock)
Should the US have some similar mechanism?
I’d say no. It comes too close to “direct democracy” and puts the nation at risk of decisions taken at the spur of the moment (and in the heat of emotion.) We need more time to reflect upon issues, not hasty reactions to them.
(I’m thinking of the insane Terri Schiavo farrago, where an emergency session of Congress – mirabile dictu! – was called to pass a pointless law regarding a dead woman on life support. We do not need this kind of reflexive response!)
That’s kind of weird. So is this correct: Let’s say Clinton wants to nominate Kagan as chief. She’d have to submit her nomination to the Senate and have her confirmed as chief? And if the Senate votes no, Kagan goes back to being a regular justice?
Huh…somewhat off-topic, but wouldn’t this lead to a strategy whereby the ruling party would seize on any big crisis befalling the opposing party, to immediately call snap elections, hopefully winning big in that immediate short term?
For instance, right after 9/11, Bush’s approval rating soared to 80-90% or even higher. What if Bush immediately dissolved the House and Senate and called for an immediate election? The GOP might have gotten huge majorities in Congress.
That does happen but not as often as you might think. Double dissolutions are quite rare in parliamentary systems as using them too much could easily backfire. Term limits still apply, so if a government calls a double dissolution after 1 year they only gain 1 extra year before they have to have elections again anyway. (Your idea of a rigid fixed schedule for elections seems rather odd to me, not saying parliamentary systems are perfect by any means).
There is no provision in either the constitution or law that would authorize the president to demote a chief justice into an associate justice position and vice versa absent a vacancy or the chief justice being unable to continue their duties. Since the judiciary is considered a co-equal branch, if a president tried to demote a chief justice (especially since their power is more administrative and less determinative in terms of fashioning the outcome of a given case), it would provoke a constitutional crisis. Congress would probably amend 28 U.S.C. to specify that a chief justice cannot be removed except through the usual impeachment proceedings.