Re: recusal (unintended consequences)

[Trevor Morrison]

Fair enough, but the phrase was "the deadlock on judicial confirmations,"
which seems to suggest a generalized hold-up of nominees across the
board.  Without engaging the legitimacy of the filibuster, I meant to ask
whether, given the very few instances of its use as against the far larger
number of nominations that have sailed through to confirmation, it is fair
to say that we now have a "deadlock on judicial confirmations."  In that
vein, I find it relevant that the ratio of unconfirmed to confirmed
nominees has not increased (indeed, by some measures it has significantly
decreased) during this administration.  Professor Duncan evidently sees a
dispositive distinction between a "formal" filibuster and simply not
bringing a nominee to committee.  Fair enough.  Still, the question remains
whether "deadlock on judicial confirmations" is really a fair and
appropriate phrase.  It's often used in the press, to be sure, but I guess
I think that we as academics ought either to avoid such phrases as obvious
hyperbole or attempt to defend them as non-hyperbolic.


At 08:14 AM 10/30/2003 -0800, you wrote:
--- Trevor Morrison
<[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
> Not to drag us (back?) into the middle of the
> political fray, but isn't
> "the deadlock on judicial confirmations" a bit of an
> overstatement?  Isn't
> the ratio of "blocked" to confirmed nominees during
> the Bush administration
> something on the order of 1:50?  If that counts as a
> "deadlock" for
> Professor Duncan, then am I right in assuming he
> means to refer to a
> phenomenon that's at least a decade old?
I thought what I said was clear, but perhaps not. I
was referring to the *filibuster* of judicial
nominees, which I believe is not a decade-old
phenomenon, but rather a quite recent one.
Cheers, Rick

=====
Rick Duncan
Welpton Professor of Law
University of Nebraska College of Law
Lincoln, NE 68583-0902
"Politics is not a bad profession. If you succeed there are many rewards,
if you disgrace yourself you can always write a book." Ronald Reagan
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Trevor W. Morrison
Assistant Professor of Law
Cornell Law School
116 Myron Taylor Hall
Ithaca, NY 14853
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