Tag: confirmation hearings

A senator beclowns herself at a Judiciary Committee hearing (again). Facebook rushes to her aid.

I don’t usually comment on the culture wars, but every once in a while they connect directly to the operation and interdependence of the judiciary. This week brought an unfortunate example.

This blog has chronicled some of the inappropriate questions and comments from Senator Mazie Hirono (D-HI) in the course of her service as a member of the Senate Judiciary Committee — comments that have drawn sharp criticism even from members of her own party. Among other things, Senator Hirono finds it proper to ask Catholic judicial nominees about their private religious affiliations and practices, as if membership in a church or the Knights of Columbus has any demonstrable impact on a person’s ability to handle the solemn duties of judicial office.

Hirono’s aggressive disgressions were on display during last week’s confirmation hearings for Amy Coney Barrett. First, Hirono asked Barrett — a widely-respected judge, law professor, and mother of seven — if she had ever sexually assaulted anyone. Hirono followed this obscene question with a loud “tsk-tsk”ing of Barrett for her use of the term “sexual preference” during the hearing. Even though Judge Barrett immediately apologized for any unintended offense, Hirono proceeded with a baseless attempt to brand Barrett as a homophobe. (The meaning of the term is certainly in flux and is offensive to many, but it remains in use by, among others, Joe Biden.)

Questions and comments like Hirono’s — which erode public confidence in the court system without any concomitant positive contribution — are cause for civic despair. But in America, such despair often manifests itself as gentle mockery. And the Babylon Bee, a Christian humor site, came through with the following satirical story:

Senator Hirono Demands ACB Be Weighed Against A Duck To See If She Is A Witch.

This may not be the funniest thing I have read in my life, but it’s certainly good for a chuckle — especially for the large number of readers who instantly recognize the direct allusion to “Monty Python’s Holy Grail.” It’s not surprising, then, that the Bee piece was shared widely on social media, including Facebook.

But in a stunning bit of self-importance and tone-deafness this week, Facebook pulled down the article and demonetized the Bee’s own Facebook page, on the spurious grounds that the article “incites violence.” After an appeal and manual review, Facebook has apparently chosen to stand by its decision.

So Americans lose twice. First, a Senator squanders an important opportunity to substantively question a Supreme Court nominee in the name of advancing identity politics. And then, a long tradition of satire is crushed by a social media giant on the weakest of pretenses. Score another point for civic despair. 

The political calculus: Who WILL be the Supreme Court nominee?

Third in a series of posts about the politics of filling the Supreme Court vacancy created by the death of Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg

In my last post, I suggested that purely from the standpoint of conventional political strategy, the President should nominate Sixth Circuit Judge Joan Larsen to fill Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg’s seat on the U.S. Supreme Court. Judge Larsen is reportedly on the short list, so it’s certainly possible.

But we also know that the President’s political instincts rarely align with convention. And if he wants a public fight instead of a better chance of an electoral win, he has other options.

I think he will go with the current consensus front-runner, Amy Coney Barrett. And he’ll do it not because of her qualifications — which are excellent — but because her nomination is likely to create the most short-term political chaos.

Continue reading “The political calculus: Who WILL be the Supreme Court nominee?”

The political calculus: Who SHOULD be the Supreme Court nominee?

Second in a series of posts about the politics of filling the Supreme Court vacancy created by the death of Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg

In an earlier post, I attempted to flesh out the political landscape surrounding any potential Supreme Court nomination. With President Trump announcing his plan to name a nominee at the end of this week, I now turn to whom he should nominate from a strategic standpoint.

I note at the outset that this is a question of politics, not whether the nominee is necessarily the best fit for the Court. While all the likely nominees are well-qualified on paper, the President’s calculus is not (nor has it ever been) about the Court’s best interests. It is about making political hay. And that is the lens through which I approach the question.

I also leave aside the question of whether the President should decline to send a nomination until after the election. That is, of course, the overarching partisan game, which I explored previously. I assume here that the President will make a nomination within the timeline he has provided, that Senator Mitch McConnell will do everything he can to bring that nomination to a vote before November, and that Senate Democrats will do everything in their power to avoid that vote.

With that in mind, the most conventionally strategic nominee is Sixth Circuit judge Joan Larsen. As I have detailed elsewhere, Judge Larsen is a highly intelligent, thoughtful, and well-qualified judge from Michigan, a political swing state which will play a big role in the upcoming Presidential election. Beyond her qualifications, her nomination poses practical problems for Democrats, who do not want to be seen as opposing a female nominee — especially one who sailed through the Senate just three years ago when she was nominated to the U.S. Court of Appeals. Larsen is also popular among voters in her home state, where she was resoundingly reelected to the state supreme court in 2016.

By nominating Judge Larsen, the President would score a political victory no matter what happens during the confirmation process. If the Senate confirms her, Trump can claim victory, charge up his base, and score valuable political points among swing voters in Michigan. If Senate Democrats manage to forestall a vote, Trump can turn that delay into a high-profile campaign issue, deflecting attention from the Biden campaign’s efforts to focus the election on COVID and Trump’s personal behavior.

Judge Larsen is reportedly on the five-person short list under consideration by the President, so her nomination is very possible. And while the qualities of the nominee are secondary to scoring political points — at least to this President — her confirmation would be a positive for the country and the Court. There is little doubt in my mind that she would make an excellent, thoughtful, respected Supreme Court Justice.*

So who will be the Supreme Court nominee? I offer some thoughts in the next post.

* CNN apparently agrees. In a photo caption yesterday, they already referred to Judge Larsen as Justice Larsen.

The mortifying state of our Supreme Court confirmation politics

The first of a series of posts about the politics of filling the Supreme Court vacancy created by the death of Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg

So here we are, not even five years removed from the embarrassing political melee that followed the death of Justice Antonin Scalia, and the same movie is playing out in even more absurd fashion.

Senator Mitch McConnell (R-KY) is working the Republican back benches to ensure a yes vote for the President’s Supreme Court nominee — never mind that there is, as of yet, no nominee to vote on. This is the same Senator McConnell who refused to even hold a hearing for then-nominee Merrick Garland in 2016 on the flimsy pretext that it was too late into a election year. To call McConnell’s reversal hypocritical is an insult to hypocrisy.

Remarkably, the Democrats have acquitted themselves even more poorly. After hectoring the American public in 2016 with the smug insistence that the Senate must vote on the Garland nomination (using the Twitter hashtag #DoYourJob), and after four years of accusing the Republicans of “stealing” the seat by not holding a hearing for Garland, the Democrats now declare —with no apparent sense of irony — that they will do everything possible to prevent a vote on the as-yet-unnamed nominee. The charge has been led, most distressingly, by the Democrats’ own Vice Presidential candidate Kamala Harris, who previously pledged to shirk her Senate duties by refusing in advance to vote for any Trump appellate court nominee, and who now promises an extended vacancy crisis in connection with her efforts to raise campaign funds. 

How did we get here? Continue reading “The mortifying state of our Supreme Court confirmation politics”

Federal judicial nominations are caught up in a political fight (again)

Senator Jeff Flake (R-AZ), one of the most prominent Republican critics of President Trump, has stated that he “and a few other senators” plan not to vote on any more federal judicial nominations until Congress acts on other issues:

“I do think that unless we can actually do something other than just approving the president’s executive calendar, his nominees, judges, that we have no reason to be there,” Flake said. “So, I think myself and a number of senators, at least a few of us will stand up and say let’s not move any more judges until we get a vote for example on tariffs.”

***

“The Senate ought to bring legislation to the floor that says hey, we’re going to push back here,” Flake said. “The European Union exporting cars to the U.S. does not represent a national security threat.”

Senator Flake is right about the need for Congress to step up and do its job in a rigorous and thoughtful manner. But it’s a damning indictment of that body that it cannot simultaneously govern the country and approve judicial nominees. Meanwhile, the federal court system continues to operate with many fewer judges than it believes necessary to do its work properly.

Gorsuch hearing preview: A moment where state ties trump partisanship

Supreme Court confirmation hearings for Neil Gorsuch begin today with the introduction of the nominee by his home state senators, Michael Bennett and Cory Gardner of Colorado.  It is a nice bipartisan tradition for the home-state senators to introduce all federal judicial nominees, presumably dating back to a time when the rest of the Senate was not assumed to be familiar with a candidate.  While almost all post-Robert Bork Supreme Court hearings have been contentious at times — usually unnecessarily so — it is a nod to decorum that the Senate still begins every hearing with such a welcoming gesture.

Home-state bipartisanship in judicial selection is not just a matter of courtesy. Senators from many states have developed bipartisan screening committees to help them recommend qualified candidates for lower federal judgeships to the President.  These screening committees review the qualifications of those interested in judgeships on federal district courts and circuit courts of appeal, and pass the names along to the home state senators, who then pass along names to the President.  While the President has ultimate discretion in choosing a nominee for any Article III judgeship, the use of screening committees effectively pre-ratifies the candidate, and helps ensure a much smoother confirmation process.  The Supreme Court represents a special circumstance where screening committees are not used, but we can hope that both President Trump and the Senate will continue to rely on them where appropriate in considering lower court nominees.

We will be following the Gorsuch hearings this week, with commentary to follow on how the hearings reflect and impact the current relationship between Congress and the courts.