I've been negligent on these posts again, but catching up now. My weekend column at Salon was about the Hagel filibuster, and what it indicates about any Supreme Court nomination. It's what I've been saying for some time: of course there's going to be a 60 vote standard, although that doesn't mean that all Republicans who oppose a SCOTUS pick will necessarily vote against cloture. But most will.
At TAP on Friday, I knocked down the idea that technology or whatever will lead to a crack-up of the Democrats and Republicans.
I'm not going to link specifically to everything else, but earlier in the week at PP I talked about the GOP and symbolic politics with regard to the new push for a Balanced Budget Amendment. And at Greg's place I've been pushing the idea that Democrats should at least threaten to reopen Senate reform, at least with regard to executive branch nominations.
Sunday, February 17, 2013
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I am a pretty much a filibuster abolitionist but if we are to have a filibuster it is most defensible with regards to judicial appointment to Article III courts due to the idiotic lifetime appointment provision and our policy of strong judicial review (also a mistake but I won't discuss the reasons here).
ReplyDeleteWith modern life expectancy it isn't unreasonable to think that a Justice appointed in his early 50s will last on the court nearly a half century. That is insane. I like Justice Brennan but it is perverse that he was still impacting public policy in the George HW Bush administration when almost 40% of the country wasn't even of voting age when he was appointed by Eisenhower. I don't like Justice Rehnquist but I recognize that conservatives do. I hope they realize that someone appointed by Nixon shouldn't have been in a position of power in the 21st Century.
It would be far better to change the constitution to fixed term appoints of ten years. Until that is done, I think both parties should filibuster every judge appointed to Article III courts if we are to have a filibuster.
I agree with Jonathan about a filibuster except it won't be successful if the appointment replaces a liberal justice. If it's an Obama-moderate to replace a conservative justice, then all bets are off.
ReplyDeleteI agree with sp6 on the need to end lifetime appointments, at least at the Supreme Court and maybe appellate courts, but the terms should be more like 18 years and no opportunity for reappointment.