Senator Josh Hawley (R-MO) said in an interview that week that “I will vote only for those Supreme Court nominees who have explicitly acknowledged that Roe v. Wade is wrongly decided.” He added, “By explicitly acknowledged, I mean on the record and before they were nominated.” Hawley championed his position as a way of correcting “an unbridled act of judicial imperialism,” the point “at which the modern Supreme Court felt it no longer had to follow the Constitution.”
Hawley is of course entitled to his views on the abortion debate, but his explicit refusal to vote for anyone who does not pass his narrow litmus test represents a direct assault on the Third Branch of government. The percentage of the Supreme Court’s cases concerning abortion are miniscule compared to the wide range of other matters it hears — matters that evidently are of no moment to Senator Hawley. Whether he is fully sincere in his pledge, or just making a political play, his ex ante refusal to even consider qualified nominees for the Court is a wholesale deriliction of his duty as a United States Senator.
Sadly, Hawley is not alone. This blog has taken to task Senator Kamala Harris (D-CA) for her equally repugnant vow not to vote for any of the President’s nominees, and Senator Mazie Hirono (D-HI) for her inappropriate questioning of judicial nominees.
Harris in particular has ambitions for a national political role. But such open hostility to the judiciary, and the readiness to treat a co-equal branch of government as a political plaything, should disqualify Hawley, Harris, and Hirono from any further national office.
The Interdependent Third Branch 