Comment by rayiner | Hacker News Reader

Comment by rayiner | Hacker News Reader

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That is not the precedent: https://www.nationalreview.com/2020/08/history-is-on-the-sid...

> History supports Republicans filling the seat. Doing so would not be in any way inconsistent with Senate Republicans’ holding open the seat vacated by Justice Antonin Scalia in 2016. The reason is simple, and was explained by Mitch McConnell at the time. Historically, throughout American history, when their party controls the Senate, presidents get to fill Supreme Court vacancies at any time — even in a presidential election year, even in a lame-duck session after the election, even after defeat. Historically, when the opposite party controls the Senate, the Senate gets to block Supreme Court nominees sent up in a presidential election year, and hold the seat open for the winner. Both of those precedents are settled by experience as old as the republic.

The linked article actually goes on to describe every situation where there was an election year Supreme Court vacancy. Please read.

I read it. The last time was over 150 years ago. Stop pretending this is a common occurrence.

It's not "common" because election-year Supreme Court vacancies where different parties control the Senate and Presidency are "not common." Republicans filibustered the nominee when LBJ sought to appoint Warren's replacement, leading to Warren not retiring. Then before that, Eisenhower, a Republican, got an election year nomination through by nominating a Democrat.

Then you're back in the 1800s. But we routinely look back to the 1800s to establish what is accepted practice in our government.

> It's not "common" because election-year Supreme Court vacancies where different parties control the Senate and Presidency are "not common."

The number of qualifications needed in order to establish this "precedent" should tip you off that it's manufactured expressly to gain a political advantage.

The "qualifications" come from the appointment and confirmation process itself. The Constitution splits the job of filling Supreme Court vacancies between the two political branches of government. The fact that the process can become political where different parties control those two branches in an election year is utterly unsurprising.

> The fact that the process can become political where different parties control those two branches in an election year is utterly unsurprising.

Correct, no one is actually surprised that Mitch McConnell abandoned the flimsy justification for his power grab the instant it outlived its use to him.

How is doing something exactly as it’s spelled out in the Constitution a “power grab”?

Alternatively, McConnell could have called the vote and the Republican majority in the Senate could have just voted it down.

Pre-nuclear option (an actual example of a power grab) even a minority of Senators could stop a nominee from getting through. The Republicans had a majority.

> Alternatively, McConnell could have called the vote and the Republican majority in the Senate could have just voted it down.

It can't be assumed that there wouldn't be Republican defections on a Garland confirmation. This is exactly the reason the majority leader refused to allow a vote. Even now, a number of Republican Senators have already "defected" and declared they won't vote on a nominee before the 2021 inauguration.

They should have voted on it!

> But we routinely look back to the 1800s to establish what is accepted practice in our government.

Routinely?

Yes. In fact, the usual presumption is the opposite. The closer in time to the adoption of the constitution we can trace some pattern (or in the case of a law to enactment of the law) that is more persuasive. If the generation that wrote the constitution engaged in this political gamesmanship (and they did) that strongly suggests they understood such conduct was permissible within the framework they created.

> The closer in time to the adoption of the constitution we can trace some pattern (or in the case of a law to enactment of the law) that is more persuasive.

This sounds a lot like "originalism", which is controversial at best.

Come on. Kennedy was confirmed in November of the year before the election.

On the third try to fill a vacancy that opened up in a non election year.

Again: come on.

You, I and everyone else knows that this was a pretext, not a precedent. You can dress it up however you like, but the fact is that McConnell was going to do whatever he wanted no matter what.

Just curious: does dem-controlled senate behave differently?

No. See: https://www.nationalreview.com/2017/03/neil-gorsuch-supreme-...

Can you cite something other than the conservative National Review?

The "conservative" National Review went back to every Supreme Court appointment in history and made charts showing exactly what happened to answer your question. The New York Times, with its "moral clarity" performed no such analysis and presented no such charts.

So no, I won't cite something else.

Why put ‘conservative’ in quotes? If you Google the name of the magazine their own meta description says conservative as the second word, so they consider themselves a partisan source.

In English quotes can be ambiguous, in this case they mean it is a direct quote from the parent comment (for emphasis, basically), not that it's under suspicion.

Your bias is showing.

The National Review article links to the source data, data from CRS and data from senate.gov. CRS is the Congressional Research Service.

It's amazing how if someone shared NYTimes, WaPo, VOX, VICE etc, then everyone's cool. But if someone shares a slightly right leaning source, people start asking for "non-conservative" source.

Honestly you won't get a clear picture from reading a single source, or even multiple sources that lean a particular way. You have to read multiple sources from both political leanings.

Think of it as a trial. Liberal leaning media is the prosecutor and conservative media is the defendant. Depending on the topic, these roles are reversed.

Fair point. I am just pointing out the hypocrisy.

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