Hmm…seems like a cushy deal to me. Retiring with “senior status” at full pay with a requirement of weighing in on at least 25% of cases is better than being on the Supreme Court, IMO. Maybe that retirement pay should be cut by 75%!
For me, that’s the operative and understated sentence in this interesting piece! McConnell has been the generator of distrust in judicial nominations for years now—undermining the system.
Hi Diane! Obviously you’re free to disagree, but I don’t think singling out as McConnell “*the* generator” of distrust in judicial nominations is fair. As I hoped to lay out in the piece, both parties have engaged in their share of gamesmanship. For example, Democrats are the party that sunk Robert Bork’s SCOTUS nomination, which many Republicans view as the “original sin” in all this. In addition, Democrats filibustered an unprecedented number of George W Bush’s circuit court nominees, helping make judicial filibusters into a norm. On the other side of the ledger, of course, is McConnell’s handling of Merrick Garland and other Obama nominees. Both parties have had their role to play here: both wielded the filibuster against nominees when the other party was in power, and then both chipped away at the filibuster when they were in power. Identifying a single culprit is harder than you might think, although certainly McConnell — as I noted — is one of the people who deserves ample blame.
Even if the Congress decides to make un-retirements illegal, all that will do is make the possible future retirements wait to be announced till after the Presidential Election. The games will go on,
Hmm…seems like a cushy deal to me. Retiring with “senior status” at full pay with a requirement of weighing in on at least 25% of cases is better than being on the Supreme Court, IMO. Maybe that retirement pay should be cut by 75%!
“McConnell is not blameless.”
For me, that’s the operative and understated sentence in this interesting piece! McConnell has been the generator of distrust in judicial nominations for years now—undermining the system.
Hi Diane! Obviously you’re free to disagree, but I don’t think singling out as McConnell “*the* generator” of distrust in judicial nominations is fair. As I hoped to lay out in the piece, both parties have engaged in their share of gamesmanship. For example, Democrats are the party that sunk Robert Bork’s SCOTUS nomination, which many Republicans view as the “original sin” in all this. In addition, Democrats filibustered an unprecedented number of George W Bush’s circuit court nominees, helping make judicial filibusters into a norm. On the other side of the ledger, of course, is McConnell’s handling of Merrick Garland and other Obama nominees. Both parties have had their role to play here: both wielded the filibuster against nominees when the other party was in power, and then both chipped away at the filibuster when they were in power. Identifying a single culprit is harder than you might think, although certainly McConnell — as I noted — is one of the people who deserves ample blame.
Even if the Congress decides to make un-retirements illegal, all that will do is make the possible future retirements wait to be announced till after the Presidential Election. The games will go on,
only in different forms.
Thank you for this piece. Well written and clear. It is enlightening and a bit worrisome at the same time
Wow. I was clueless about most of this, Gabe. Thanks for another great teaching session.