On September 21, 1981, Sandra Day O’Connor was confirmed as a Supreme Court Justice by a Senate vote of 99 to 0.
On October 6, 2018, Brett Kavenaugh was confirmed as a Supreme Court Justice by a Senate vote of 50 to 48.
What a difference! How pleasant life must have been in 1981. A unanimous decision! Can you imagine anything like that happening today?
I’ve checked out the confirmation votes for several Justices and many fall in the approval range of 60 something to 30 something. So unanimous or near unanimous votes are rare. But even that range is far different from what I fear the current trend is: super-partisan votes of the type received by Kavenaugh.
Some of this, of course, is because the nomination of a Justice is always a political act. Presidents pick people they feel will advance their own agenda. Trump’s nomination of Amy Coney Barrett is a flagrant attempt to turn the court in his favor so it will assist in his reelection if matters wind up there.
In the past, presidents have been disappointed. President Eisenhower said one of his worst mistakes was nominating Earl Warren.
What bothers me is nowadays the surprises are few. One can often predict the vote on a case based solely on what the case is about. This doesn’t make sense to me. Can a conservative and a liberal look at the same facts and the same laws and the same precedents and come out with different conclusions that happen to agree with their known political leanings? Now I know nothing about the law, but can it be as imprecise as that? That’s hard to take for a mathematician! Or is it likely the Justices are playing games to achieve a predetermined result? There are all too rare exceptions to this predictability, although a few have been provided by O’Connor, Kennedy, and Roberts.
We are heading into another highly partisan confirmation process with Barrett. I wonder what the advantage is to Democrats to pull out all the stops. Especially when the chances of success range from zero to slight.
It didn’t work with Clarence Thomas. It didn’t work with Neil Gorsuch (a 54 to 45 vote). It didn’t work with Brett Kavenaugh. There was a great deal of nastiness in the opposition to these nominations. And I wonder what good it accomplished. And what good it will accomplish with Barrett.
I think Justices are, believe it or not, human. It’s the only miniscule bit of hope I have that in certain cases they will judge without bias. As humans, though, they might react to hostile treatment in much the same way we mere mortals would. Something along the lines of “Why should I consider your point of view when you vilified me during confirmation hearings?” Presumably Justices are above such mundane thinking. But are they?
Certainly Clarence Thomas has been a consistent vote against everything I believe. Gorsuch and Kavenaugh are earning that reputation. And now there is Barrett.
She is going to be attacked as a threat to the Affordable Care Act. It’s a legitimate fear that she will help gut it. But what is to be gained by being nasty. She’ll remember that when she comes to consider the case. Now I know this Democratic approach probably is a ploy to convince voters to vote the “right” way November 3. But that’s a shortrange goal.
I guess I can accept that the Affordable Care Act fear is a point worth making, but can’t it be done in an adult non-attack manner? And what is the advantage in the stand taken by some Senate Democrats, including Chuck Schumer, that they won’t even meet with her? That’s just plain foolish. And petty. What is the harm of establishing even the most trivial personal relationship? It can’t hurt and there is, small as it might be, a hope it could trigger at least a deeper consideration of some point.
Modern day politics sickens me. On all sides.
On October 6, 2018, Brett Kavenaugh was confirmed as a Supreme Court Justice by a Senate vote of 50 to 48.
What a difference! How pleasant life must have been in 1981. A unanimous decision! Can you imagine anything like that happening today?
I’ve checked out the confirmation votes for several Justices and many fall in the approval range of 60 something to 30 something. So unanimous or near unanimous votes are rare. But even that range is far different from what I fear the current trend is: super-partisan votes of the type received by Kavenaugh.
Some of this, of course, is because the nomination of a Justice is always a political act. Presidents pick people they feel will advance their own agenda. Trump’s nomination of Amy Coney Barrett is a flagrant attempt to turn the court in his favor so it will assist in his reelection if matters wind up there.
In the past, presidents have been disappointed. President Eisenhower said one of his worst mistakes was nominating Earl Warren.
What bothers me is nowadays the surprises are few. One can often predict the vote on a case based solely on what the case is about. This doesn’t make sense to me. Can a conservative and a liberal look at the same facts and the same laws and the same precedents and come out with different conclusions that happen to agree with their known political leanings? Now I know nothing about the law, but can it be as imprecise as that? That’s hard to take for a mathematician! Or is it likely the Justices are playing games to achieve a predetermined result? There are all too rare exceptions to this predictability, although a few have been provided by O’Connor, Kennedy, and Roberts.
We are heading into another highly partisan confirmation process with Barrett. I wonder what the advantage is to Democrats to pull out all the stops. Especially when the chances of success range from zero to slight.
It didn’t work with Clarence Thomas. It didn’t work with Neil Gorsuch (a 54 to 45 vote). It didn’t work with Brett Kavenaugh. There was a great deal of nastiness in the opposition to these nominations. And I wonder what good it accomplished. And what good it will accomplish with Barrett.
I think Justices are, believe it or not, human. It’s the only miniscule bit of hope I have that in certain cases they will judge without bias. As humans, though, they might react to hostile treatment in much the same way we mere mortals would. Something along the lines of “Why should I consider your point of view when you vilified me during confirmation hearings?” Presumably Justices are above such mundane thinking. But are they?
Certainly Clarence Thomas has been a consistent vote against everything I believe. Gorsuch and Kavenaugh are earning that reputation. And now there is Barrett.
She is going to be attacked as a threat to the Affordable Care Act. It’s a legitimate fear that she will help gut it. But what is to be gained by being nasty. She’ll remember that when she comes to consider the case. Now I know this Democratic approach probably is a ploy to convince voters to vote the “right” way November 3. But that’s a shortrange goal.
I guess I can accept that the Affordable Care Act fear is a point worth making, but can’t it be done in an adult non-attack manner? And what is the advantage in the stand taken by some Senate Democrats, including Chuck Schumer, that they won’t even meet with her? That’s just plain foolish. And petty. What is the harm of establishing even the most trivial personal relationship? It can’t hurt and there is, small as it might be, a hope it could trigger at least a deeper consideration of some point.
Modern day politics sickens me. On all sides.
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