For the longest time, there were no major issues with Supreme Court vacancies or that of any judicial nominees. Sure, we had some issues with the Supreme Court as the number of people that are supposed to be on it had fluctuated for a while. But there could be vacancies after a president lost the election that he could still fill, like what happened with John Adams. But then things all changed when a politician named Thurmond invented a rule.
In reality, there is no real practice and implication of this rule. But what is it? Well, it states that during a presidential election year, especially during the second term of a term limited president, one would stop appointing judges. But this often never happens in reality until Obama was in office. Plus, people would often flip flop on this as it appears in some places to be the only issue that both Democrats and Republicans are hypocrites on. But it isn’t.
Now let’s get to when it was first implemented and all the horribleness of this started. It was towards the end of the administration of Lyndon Johnson. There was a potential for a vacancy on the Supreme Court, but the seats were never vacated yet. They never were until the next president, namely Nixon, took office, getting to name a new Chief Justice. But the whole issue was that it was late in the administration of Johnson and thus when Thurmond invented this rarely enforced rule of his.
Starting from that administration onward, pretty much every president had judicial controversies. Every single one from Johnson onward was affected, but not any one before him. Sure, there were some other issues earlier with some late judicial vacancies. But it wasn’t until this rule was made up that it became a constant part of the country.
Still, like I said, there is never a point where people just stop confirming judges. Sometimes it is slowed down for a while. But until the Obama administration, it wasn’t just blatantly ignored like it was. Trump talked about in the first debate how there were a lot of judges that he got to appoint since there were vacancies at the start of his administration. But he acted as if it was just a lazy person who wasn’t doing his job by filling these vacancies that caused this to happen and not the unprecedented obstruction and disrespect that Obama got during his time in office. Now, Republicans, of course, have done a 180 with this, trying to confirm all of the judges that they can despite the fact that they can still maintain control of the presidency and senate.
This rule isn’t even guidelines. It definitely isn’t a good thing. It arguably isn’t even real outside of the end of the Obama administration as previously stated. It is so inconsistency applied with the senate and presidency constantly switching or not otherwise in control. Some say that it shouldn’t exist unless it should. The rules invented during the Merrick Garland nomination that follow this rule are instantly thrown out when they no longer benefit them.
This is how we wind up with a whole mess of all this judicial system, something now swamped with tainted judges thanks to conservatives. They are awful and need to be stopped. Making sure that this rule never applies during a Democratic presidency or senate is a good start since there is no way that Republicans follow it when it doesn’t benefit them. The evidence is clear now. If they aren’t willing to follow their own rules, then why follow have rules? They can’t just either confirm judges or put the senate on recess. But that’s all that they do now. They don’t vote on more important things like a coronavirus relief bill that the house passed in May or even sooner. This supposed rule needs to go forever since it arguably already has.
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