What the Constitution Tells Us About How Senators Should Consider Obama’s Judicial Nominees

Hans von Spakovsky / @HvonSpakovsky / November 06, 2015 / 22 comments

What exactly is the Senate’s role of “Advice and Consent” when it comes to the nominations made by a president? It’s a topic of perpetual debate in Washington.  One wrong-headed argument holds the role to be quite modest: Senators should defer to a president’s choices except in extreme circumstances. That position is advanced far too often by Republicans, and almost never by Democrats (except when a member of their party is doing the nominating). It has led some Republican senators to have a policy against filibustering presidential nominees, no matter how much a nominee’s confirmation may endanger the rule of law and adherence to the constitutional order......Senators who believe that the president’s choice of judicial nominees should be given substantial deference are deeply mistaken. They owe deference to the Constitution, not the president. The importance of preserving the rule of law and adhering to the Constitution is too important for them to continue to hold this manifestly wrong—and, frankly, dangerous—view.

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