When a vacancy occurs on the Supreme Court, the President may nominate a replacement, at any time he pleases. The Senate must confirm the nomination and may do it whenever they please. When the nominee is confirmed, he joins the Court, usually within days of his/her confirmation. You can find out when that has occurred over any term of the Court by looking back at history. The Constitution is silent on timing.
Both parties have taken different positions on when and how to nominate replacement Justices. Since it is a lifetime appointment, each party wants to get an advantage if they can. When the Senate refused to consider Mr Garland, they claimed a Democrat invented tactic to delay a nomination in the year of a Presidential election. The rationale was that it wasn’t fair to allow a lame duck President to exercise his appointment authority. This only occurs if one party occupies the White House and another holds the Senate. It’s politics. This cockamamie theory says that after 1 October, the Senate can’t get a Justice confirmed between now and the mid term election and after the mid term election, we are in a presidential election season, albeit two years in the future. All of this is nonsense, but the President can nominate whenever a vacancy occurs and the Senate can consider that nomination as they please. The outcome will depend on who has the power and how they exercise it.
Since the likelihood is that the Senate will remain in Republican hands, there will be many Federal Court appointments in the next two years, including another Supreme Court appointment if there is another vacancy. Of course, the makeup of the New Senate will be important, depending on the results of the November election. If the Republicans have 60 Senators in the next Congress, the Democrats will woe the day that they pulled these silly stunts.
This was the first time I had heard that “complex” Senate rules determined the shelf life of a Supreme Court nominee before midterms.
In any case, thanks.
But that still leaves me wondering why Ms. Ford & Co, are insisting on next Thursday to testify.