Geoffrey Stone on Republican Threats to Block Clinton Supreme Court Nominees

Alexander Hamilton Would Turn Over in his Grave

In recent days, several leading Republicans, including Sens. Ted Cruz and Richard Burr, have argued that if Hillary Clinton is elected president, Senate Republicans should refuse to confirm any of her nominees to the Supreme Court. The very suggestion of such a strategy threatens to undermine core principles of our constitutional democracy.

The driving motivation for those taking this position has nothing to do with principle. It is about partisan politics, plain and simple. Senate Republicans who refused even to hold hearings on President Barack Obama's nomination of Merrick Garland pretended that the rationale for their stance was the “principle” that a president should not be allowed to appoint a justice in the final year of his term. Although that claim was plainly disingenuous and has no foundation in American history, the advocates of the “no Clinton nominees” position now go even further and insist that the Senate should not confirm any nomination by a president they don't like.

This is entirely about partisan politics. They do not want to see a change in the ideological makeup of the Supreme Court. The problem, though, is that throughout our nation's history the Senate has consistently confirmed Supreme Court nominees even when they are made by a president of the opposite party and even when their confirmation would shift the ideological direction of the court.

Read more at Crain's Chicago Business