As far as the schedule of the court, this might as well be summer.
Obama nominated Garland 32 days after Scalia was found dead. That is a similar time frame that Obama took in nominating Sotomayor and Kagan. Not fast. Not slow. Within a couple days of the same.
Sotomayor’s confirmation took 2 months and 1 week from the time the nomination was submitted. Kagan’s took just shy of 3 months. Both were seated in time to start the fall term of the court in October.
Should Garland get a hearing and within a similar time frame then we would be looking toward a confirmation vote mid May to Mid June. Too late to hear any cases on the current term (last of which is heard in April). The court is in recess at that time until the fall term.
Now there is no telling if the GOP will completely stonewall this. They might. But even if they slow walk the nomination through the usual processes they could delay by a three more months and it would make no difference at all in terms of the court’s calendar. A justice confirmed in early May would hear the same cases as one seated in September. A justice voted down in early May and one voted down in September both don’t get seated. The only difference is if you think the GOP would vote down Garland but still approve of a subsequent Obama nominee. Unlikely IMHO.
The Senate better think long and hard about a Trump/Clinton match up. Do they really want to reject a respected moderate judge and take a chance President HRC will nominate someone much more liberal?
They better approve this moderate for the Supreme Court while they have the chance. HRC will probably fill at least one and maybe two new vacancies. Several justices are old and in poor health.
I still can’t get over the blinding hypocrisy of “Can’t vet Obama’s nominee in the last year of his term, we need to let the people decide. Oh, what’s that, Hillary’s won the election, *now *we’ll vote for Obama’s guy because Hil’s candidate might be worse.” Cannot find the faintest shadow of a principled position in that anywhere. I mean, there’s bald-faced lying, and then there’s …well, I don’t stock adjectives that low.
I think I’m going to have to disagree with you and the Washington Post (:eek:)
They kind of do a bait-and-switch in that article between two questions. One is: is the senate constitutionally obliged to consider a SCOTUS nominee? The other is: is there precedent for the senate’s refusal to consider a nominee?
They give examples illustrating something like precedent (as they say, there’s no exactly analogous situation, but a few close fits), but that’s a different question from the title of the article.
The question was one of constitutional interpretation (where’s Scalia when you need him)? My personal view is that intent, where intent is obvious, should be considered when parsing the constitution and the implication of this clause is clearly that the senate will be involved in considering candidates, even if they vote them all down indefinitely.
Even if someone were to disagree with my view on the constitution, it’s a little extreme to label it a three pinocchio lie.
no controversial decisions or known personal issues;
sufficiently moderate to be palatable to Obama and the Democrats; and
openly declared to be acceptable by at least one key Republican.
Maybe Garland isn’t as young or progressive as Obama might have chosen if he’d had a free hand but there’s nothing objectionable there (either from a political or judicial standpoint) and he undermines the Republican’s obstructionist stance on the nomination. It’s a win-win for him.
While I would dearly love to see Thomas off the court, I suspect the next to go (as in “retire”, not necessarily “die”) will be Ginsburg who is not looking all that well these days. Which means that anyone hoping for a more left-leaning court better hope Clinton (or Sanders) wins in November.
Does the Constitution say anything about the position of Majority Whip? 'Cause it’s not *Senate *that’s refusing to even consider doing the job the Constitution says they have- it’s one guy. At least five Republican Senators have said that they’d be willing to go through the vetting procedure, but Mitch McConnell isn’t letting the Senate do its job.
It’s kind of bullshit to hide behind the Constitution like this, don’t you think?
Sen. Pat Toomey (R-PA) would be happy to vote for Merrick Garland if he is nominated by anybody but Obama:
[QUOTE=Sen. Pat Toomey]
Should Merrick Garland be nominated again by the next president, I would be happy to carefully consider his nomination…
[/QUOTE]
The Constitution says that the President shall nominate and appoint a SC justice “with the advice and consent of the Senate” – it doesn’t say “with the advice and consent of the Senate Majority Leader”, or anything else. A single Senator, or a handful, no matter who they are and what they say, are not “the Senate”. So anything less then consideration by the entire Senate is not meeting the Constitution. I doubt anyone can be prosecuted for that, but it’s pretty rich to see folks who supposedly value adherence to the Constitution as advocating for violating both letter and spirit of the Constitution.
Obama, as usual, has the R’s by the shorties. I don’t think any major party has been ‘blessed’ with less qualified leaders than the current R’s. Their lesser of two evils is certainly to reverse course and confirm the nominee, then hope to maintain Senate control partly as a result of demonstrating they are willing and able to perform their duties correctly. I bet they don’t do it. I bet they do everything that will make Clinton the next POTUS, and that she will nominate at least two, maybe 4 Progressive, brilliant judges to the bench during her term or terms.
It says the President can’t do it without the advice and consent of the Senate. It says nothing about whether the Senate must provide advice and consent.
There’s a lot of stuff that various people can’t do without my consent. That doesn’t mean I have to give them my consent; it means they have to get my consent before they proceed. I can – and do – refuse to give that consent every day, without fail, while breaking no law; how is this any different?