Posted by Juan Non-Volokh: Judicial Obstruction -- Three Different Kinds: http://volokh.com/archives/archive_2005_05_15-2005_05_21.shtml#1116684739
Some defenders of the judicial filibuster suggest this is simple payback for Republican mistreatment of Clinton nominees from 1995-2000. Others argue Senate Democrats have no choice because other, more traditional means, of blocking nominees (e.g. blue slips) have been curtailed. Implicit in some of these arguments is the view that blocking a judge is blocking a judge, no matter how it is done. Matthew Yglesias, for instance, [1]argues that �If we're talking about blocking judges, we should be talking about all the ways (blue slips, failure to schedule hearings, etc.) that nominees have been blocked from getting floor votes.� While I agree with the principle that all nominees should get hearings and a floor vote within a reasonable period of time � and that it was wrong for both Republicans and Democrats to block action on Clinton, Bush, and Reagan nominees in years past � I am not convinced that all forms of delay are equivalent, or that principled opposition to one suggests principled opposition to them all. It seems to me that there are significant differences between the majority�s control of the Senate agenda, the traditional use of blue slips by home state Senators, and a minority filibuster, and that it is reasonable to oppose the obstruction or delay of nominees through some of these methods but not others. Majority control of the Senate entails certain prerogatives. Among them are the control of committees and the Senate�s agenda. The party in control of the Senate decides what business to conduct and when to conduct it. As a general matter, it is not �obstruction� when the Senate majority refuses to take up issues supported by the President, as the Senate is entitled to have its own priorities. Thus, one should expect that a Senate majority will consider nominees it likes more rapidly than those it does not, and that nominees from a President of the same party will be confirmed more rapidly than those of a President of the opposition. Again, this sort of agenda control is the prerogative of the party in control. I believe the Senate majority should make a reasonable effort to consider the President�s nominees to the judicial or executive branch without undue delay, but the majority must enjoy some leeway here as it is the majority. The Senate majority may ignore the President�s legislative initiatives because it has other legislative priorities. That is the majority�s prerogative. Yet only the President can nominate. Therefore if the Senate delays positions necessarily remain unfilled, potentially impeding the operation of the other coordinate branches. So while its traditional for Senate majorities to treat their own party�s nominees with greater dispatch, I do not think they should be obstructionist. If a nominee is truly bad, the Senate majority should hold a vote and defeat him, not bottle up the nomination in committee while a seat remains unfilled. The one way Senators of a minority party blocked undesirable judicial nominees in the past was through the blue slip, yet this was limited to home state Senators. As practiced for decades, the policy worked like this. When the President nominated someone, a blue slip would be sent to the Senators from the state in which the nominee was to sit. The Senator would return the blue slip with an indication whether he or she supported or opposed the nominee. Traditionally, if the Senator returned a negative blue slip, or refused to return the blue slip at all, the nominee would not be confirmed. The blue slip thus gave home state Senators of either party an effective veto of judicial nominees that would sit in their states, and encouraged Presidents to consider the views of home state Senators when picking judicial nominees. While there is some dispute as to how consistently the blue slip rule was enforced in the past, there is no question that Republicans tightened the rule under President Clinton, and have effectively eliminated it under President Bush. The blue slip is incredibly undemocratic. It allows a single Senator to block a judicial nominee. The justification for it is that a home state Senator has a disproportionate interest in judicial nominees that will sit in his or her state. In the case of district court nominees, this interest is quite large. With circuit court nominees, the home state interest is somewhat less, but still substantial. The blue slip is a traditional recognition that Senators are representatives of their states, as such, and that they should have some say about the administration of justice in the states they represent. I don�t much like the blue slip, particularly for circuit court nominees, but it is a Senate tradition, some would say �Senatorial courtesy,� observed more often than not for many decades. As such, it has its defenders. The filibuster is the newest means deployed to block judicial nominees, and effectively imposes a supermajority requirement for judicial confirmation. Prior to the election of President Bush, it had never been used by a Senate minority to prevent confirmation of a judicial nominee enjoying majority support. The one nominee ever filibustered before, Justice Abe Fortas, was opposed by Senators from both parties, lacked majority support, and eventually resigned from the bench under an ethical cloud. It is most certainly not a precedent for the filibusters we have seen for the past few years. Given its lack of any historical pedigree, I find it hard to justify the filibuster on anything but consequentialist grounds. Its use is not simple payback, insofar as it was not used before, and instead represents an escalation in the fight over judicial confirmations. Some believe it is warranted because judges have life tenure, but this was not the constitutional design. Judges have always been confirmed by a simple majority, and I see no reason to change. Indeed, I find it hard to view the current filibuster as anything more than sour grapes. To recap, I believe all judicial nominees of whichever party should be considered within a reasonable period of time from their nomination � a principle both parties have violated time and again over the past twenty years. Senate majorities and home state Senators have blocked or delayed disfavored nominees for some time, though minority filibusters have not been used. I believe one could support the Senate majority�s agenda control or even blue slips without defending the filibuster, as they are not all the same. I, for one, oppose them all. References 1. http://www.prospect.org/weblog/archives/2005/05/index.html#006513 _______________________________________________ Volokh mailing list [email protected] http://highsorcery.com/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/volokh
