Ricochet is the best place on the internet to discuss the issues of the day, either through commenting on posts or writing your own for our active and dynamic community in a fully moderated environment. In addition, the Ricochet Audio Network offers over 50 original podcasts with new episodes released every day.
Two D’s on the Senate Judiciary Committee Refuse to Meet with Amy Coney Barrett
They think they are snubbing her, however, they are really doing her a big favor. Judge Barrett will be spared the inane comments and ugly questions of Richard Blumenthal of Connecticut and Mazie Hirono of Hawaii. Hirono is just stupid and Blumenthal is just mean. She doesn’t need to waste her valuable time meeting with them before the assault of the hearings. Gives Barrett more time to prepare.
Published in Politics
Hearings are not required by the Constitution. Even after hearings were instituted, the nominee did not appear at the hearing, since doing so would raise too many problems with asking the nominee how the nominee would rule in hypothetical cases (something judges are not supposed to do). Having the nominee appear in a public hearing is a relatively recent development in the judicial nomination process, and the recent hearings have demonstrated why public hearings with the nominee were for so long considered to be a bad idea. I believe there was a period in which judicial nominees answered written questions.
It reads to me that the meetings Sens. Hirono and Blumenthal are refusing are the “informal” personal meetings that typically occur before the public hearings. Those types of meetings are also not required by the Constitution, but are a much longer tradition than hearings. For much of the United States history, such individual meetings with Senators was how the President introduced the judicial nominee to the Senators as part of convincing the Senators that the nominee was qualified and suitable for the job.
Senators who refuse to meet with a judicial nominee are indicating that they will make their decisions based on the Senator’s own dogma, and not based on a good faith inquiry into the nominee’s qualification and suitability.
One of my senators, Kirsten Gillibrand, has also said she will not meet with Barrett, calling her nomination “illegitimate.”
I sent her the following email:
For Senators refusing to meet because the process is “illegitimate” – on what basis? The general argument that we should “let the voters decide” based on the Presidential election, one of the candidates (Biden) specifically and emphatically refuses to tell the voters anything about what type of justice he would nominate, so the voters have no basis on which to factor judicial nominations into the voters’ election decision. Therefore, waiting to make judicial nominations for some hypothetical election result with no defined judicial nomination criteria is illegitimate.
Biden probably doesn’t remember there IS a Supreme Court.
He could be correct.
Eh, Biden has never been correct about anything. He’s not going to start now.