Picking Scalia's Successor

Justice Scalia’s death over the weekend has kicked off a huge political fight over whether President Obama should (or has the right!) to name his successor. The argument against his doing so appears to be the idea that a President should not appoint a Supreme Court justice this close to an election where his name is not on the ballot. Better to let the “will of the people” be heard and allow the next President to make the pick. On the other hand, Obama has 11 months left in office, Supreme Court nominees move, on average, in about 75 days and even contentious appointees, such as Clarence Thomas, were announced, vetted, and confirmed in less than 4 months. 

The Republican talking point about the unprecedented nature of having a President appoint a new Justice this close to an election is simply not true. This is a very rare situation, and there is little precedent, but what does exist weighs against the GOP’s point of view. Anthony Kennedy was confirmed in February 1988, Justices Powell and Rehnquist got through in early 1972 (when Nixon was up for re-election, but without guarantee of winning), and Eisenhower put through three Justices as recess appointments in 1956. The only recent election year nominee who did not get through was Abe Fortas, who was also under criminal investigation at the time of LBJ’s attempt to elevate him to Chief Justice in 1968. 

What this is really about is the Republicans’ fear of losing their decades-long majority on the Court. And this is understandable. After all, the Court is the final arbiter of the most important Constitutional and statutory questions our country struggles with - from Bush v. Gore to Obamacare, same sex marriage to immigration policy, the modern Court has played a massive role in our country’s fortunes. From the 1930s well into the 1980s, the Court leaned left and even as Republican Presidents made the overwhelming majority of picks in modern times (the Democrats went from 1967 until 1993 without one), the dam did not fully break until the early 1990s and since then, a body of law has been erected on everything from arcane issues like employment mediation clauses and Tenth Amendment states rights to more familiar questions of voting rights and affirmative action that have benefited the conservative view of the law. Republicans will not willingly let that go. 

While replacing a jurist with one kind of legal philosophy with one who has a different one may seem novel, it was not always so. Thurgood Marshall, arguably one of the most liberal Justices of the 20th Century, was replaced by Clarence Thomas, one of the most conservative Justices of any time. Hugo Black, a lion of the New Deal, was replaced by corporate lawyer Lewis Powell, and on and on. That is just the way the quirks and vagaries of death and retirement work. On Election Night 2000, Justice Sandra Day O’Connor famously bemoaned the fact she would have to stay on the Court when it appeared Gore was going to win because she would not allow her seat to be filled by a Democratic President, so the idea that the Court, or its members, is not “political” is nonsense.

The President is well within his rights to name a new Justice and nothing in the Constitution stops him from doing so. When he won re-election in 2012, it did not come with an expiration date on his ability to appoint judges to the federal bench. The shameful display of blind obstruction by Senator McConnell and Republicans running for President should be called out as such. If the Senate wants to take up the President’s nominee and vote him or her down, they have every right to do so, but to set a precedent that no nominee of an opposing party will be heard solely for political gain should not stand. 

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Congress Takes A Vacation

With news that the White House and Congressional leaders have worked out a deal that will raise the debt limit through March 2017, fund the federal government and wrap other important matters like the highway bill into a massive legislative burrito, the passage of any additional, meaningful legislation before the President leaves office in January 2017 has come to an end.

This is quite convenient for incoming Speaker of the House Paul Ryan. He need not sully himself with the messy details of governing or horse trading with the so-called Freedom Caucus over threats to default on our debt or other silliness. He can focus on his primary interests, which appear to be convincing the country that Social Security and Medicare need to be some combination of slashed and privatized while ensuring the wealthiest Americans pay as little in taxes as humanly possible.

More generally, this gives Congress the freedom to do fuck all before Election Day 2016, which I would guess suits the 435 members of the House and 34 Senators who are up for re-election just fine. Without the need to do the basic blocking and tackling of legislating, they are free to raise money and campaign about how shitty their opponents are without fear of having to do any work. In the Senate, any notion of basic governing, like voting on Obama appointees to the federal judiciary or a random Cabinet Secretary (looking at you, soon-to-be Acting Secretary of Education John King, Jr.) are already out the window and with Republicans nursing a small majority that they desperately want to hold on to so they can either ram through a new Republican President’s agenda or get to the business of blocking anything a new Democratic President might do.

This also works nicely for the media. After all, why bother having reporters on Capitol Hill when they can be disbursed to cover the antics of Donald Trump, Ben Carson, and the rest of the crew on the Republican side or hound Hillary Clinton while she waltzes to the Democratic nomination. Campaigns are far more compelling than dreary legislative sausage making or Committee hearings (oh right, we had one of those recently and after drumming up anticipation for months, the media gave a “move along, nothing to see here” sign when Trey Gowdy deteriorated into a puddle of sweat).

I suppose we should not get too upset about this. After all, it is nice that there will be people to inspect our food, investigate criminal activity, and allow us access to national parks, but one wonders whether a bit more should be expected from people making $174,000 a year and who are provided with lifetime health benefits after serving 5 years in office. Of course, since Congress is only in session for about 135 days each year, passing a budget and ensuring that the bills get paid may be the bare minimum of what it can do – the equivalent of getting a D minus grade on an exam in a class you are taking pass/fail. Hoping that Congress would address larger societal concerns like gun safety, climate change, income inequality, or the minimum wage, or would keep the judiciary properly staffed with judges and Cabinet agencies helmed by people who receive Senate confirmation seems to be more than we should expect anymore.

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