It's Thursday, June 2 and Day 110 since Justice Antonin Scalia died and Mitch McConnell laid down his Supreme Court blockade: No meetings, no hearings, no votes on his replacement. It's also Day 78 since President Obama named Merrick Garland to be Scalia's replacement. What's the Senate doing today instead of considering the Supreme Court nominee?
Why, the Senate is on Day 7 of Memorial Day, of course. While they’re busy with that, let’s review how historically outrageous this situation is:
In a new scholarly article, law professors Robin Kar and Jason Mazzone have taken a deep dive into the history of Supreme Court nominations to test the plausibility of the Senate Republicans’ purported “justification” for their action. Not surprisingly, they find that the Senate Republicans’ alleged “justification” is completely bogus. It is, in short, exactly what it appears to be — a cynical and unconscionable sham.
What Kar and Mazzone found is that over the entire course of American history there have been 103 instances (prior to this one) in which an elected president faced a vacancy on the Supreme Court prior to the election of the next president. They found that in every one of those 103 instances, the president nominated and, with the advice and consent of the Senate, appointed the new Justice. There has not been a single exception to this practice in all of American history. And this is true even when, as in the current situation, the vacancy arose during an election year. In short, this would be the first time in American history that a president in President Obama’s position would be denied the opportunity to fill a vacancy on the Supreme Court.
Please donate $3 to turn the Senate blue. The future of the Supreme Court depends on it.