Joe Biden: The Senate’s Duty on a Supreme Court Nominee
'IN my 36-year tenure in the United States Senate — nearly half of it as chairman or ranking Democrat on the Judiciary Committee — I presided or helped preside over nine nominees to the Supreme Court, from both Republican and Democratic presidents. That’s more than anyone else alive today.
In every instance we adhered to the process explicitly laid out in the Constitution: The president has the constitutional duty to nominate; the Senate has the constitutional obligation to provide advice and consent. It is written plainly in the Constitution that both presidents and senators swear an oath to uphold and defend.
That’s why I was so surprised and saddened to see Republican leaders tell President Obama and me that they would not even consider a Supreme Court nominee this year. No meetings. No hearings. No votes. Nothing. It is an unprecedented act of obstruction. And it risks a stain on the legacy of all those complicit in carrying out this plan. I would ask my friends and colleagues — and all those who love the Senate — to think long and hard before going down this road.
Some have taken comments I made in 1992 to mean that I supported the same kind of obstructionist position as a senator. But that reading distorts the broader meaning of the speech I gave from the Senate floor that year.
It was late June, and at the time there was much speculation that a sitting justice would retire, leaving President George H.W. Bush to appoint a successor in the final months of his first term.
We had been through several highly contentious Supreme Court confirmation hearings during my tenure, and I feared that a nomination at that late date, just a few weeks before the presidential conventions, would create immense political acrimony. So I called on the president to wait until after the election to submit a nomination if a sitting justice were to create a vacancy by retiring before November. And if the president declined to do that, I recommended that the Judiciary Committee not hold hearings “until after the political campaign season is over.”
Those brief statements were part of a much more extensive speech that reviewed the history of Supreme Court nomination fights during election years. My purpose was not to obstruct, but to call for two important goals: restoring a more consultative process between the White House and the Senate in filling Supreme Court vacancies, and encouraging the nomination of a consensus candidate who could lower the partisan temperature in the country.
It is the same view I hold today.
Throughout that speech, and throughout my career, I’ve argued that the Senate has an important role to play. This involves the president’s seeking advice from its leaders before making a nomination — as President Obama has done and will continue to do — and the Senate’s examining candidates before deciding whether to consent to their appointments.'>>>
http://www.nytimes.com/2016/03/04/opinion/joe-biden-the-senates-duty-to-advise-and-consent.html?
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