[EL] Vice President Biden on S. Ct. nominations during the political season

[Chambers, Hank]

Hello all -


The excerpted portion of the 1992 Biden speech is interesting.  However, given the political context in 1992, I am not sure it sheds much light on how senators should be judged for their handling of the current situation.



1) Then-Sen. Biden was speculating about what to do with a vacancy created by the voluntary resignation of, rather than the death of, a sitting justice during the midst of a particularly messy presidential campaign - involving Clinton, Bush and Perot.  He may have intended to suggest that a Supreme Court justice ought not resign for political reasons in the midst of that presidential campaign.  A speech on the Senate floor that could be interpreted as a suggestion that a justice should not resign so that he or she could be replaced by Pres. Bush seems different than the current assertion by some Senate leaders that the Senate will not consider President Obama's nominee to fill an unexpected vacancy.  At the least, Sen. Biden's suggestion that politics might play a role in the appointments process in the context of a justice who may have resigned for political reasons is not particularly odd.


2) The country was less than one year removed from the Justice Clarence Thomas hearings.  It may well have been that Sen. Biden was thinking about how much worse those hearings would have been had they been held in October (as Justice Thomas' were in 1991) of an election year during which 1/3 of the Senators would have been in the middle of their reelection campaigns.


Of course, Sen. Biden may still have been wrong-headed.


-Hank


Henry L. Chambers, Jr.
Professor of Law
University of Richmond School of Law
28 Westhampton Way
Richmond, Va. 23173
(804) 289-8199
hchamber at richmond.edu



________________________________
From: law-election-bounces at department-lists.uci.edu <law-election-bounces at department-lists.uci.edu> on behalf of Scarberry, Mark <Mark.Scarberry at pepperdine.edu>
Sent: Monday, February 22, 2016 8:24 PM
To: law-election at uci.edu
Subject: [EL] Vice President Biden on S. Ct. nominations during the political season

It was four months later in the political season than at present - if that matters - but here is the Vice President's view in 1992 (along with his explanation of the context and of what he meant):

http://www.cbsnews.com/news/joe-biden-once-took-the-gops-position-on-supreme-court-vacancy/.

Mark

Mark S. Scarberry
Professor of Law
Pepperdine Univ. School of Law
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