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The Interim Period
Welcome to the interim period, or as the advocacy groups call it: fund-raising season. No sooner does a vacancy arise than advocacy groups, especially those who oppose the president's agenda, begin a campaign designed to intimidate the president and scare their own supporters into giving money to support the organization's good fight in a just cause. In response, and not unlike the arms race of the cold war era, groups generally in support of the president then feel compelled to rally their own troops round the flag. Let the campaign begin! The VacancyThe poor retiring Supreme Court justice, Stevens in this case, doesn't even get a day's recognition all to himself in the media. Immediate speculation regarding a successor surfaces along side the retirement story, and the sitting justice is literally yesterday's news. The president's people will talk about moving quickly to name a nominee (in this case, they really mean it), and the media will quickly focus on its own short list of candidates. Consult the President link on this site to get a view of how this phase of the appointment process operates. Check the Nomination Setting link to learn how the political environment affects this whole process and The Setting link here (or underneath the title on this page) for an assessment of the setting as it relates to this specific vacancy. President Obama, of course, is relatively fresh off an appointment to the Supreme Court, Sonia Sotomayor being nominated in May of 2009. That same vetted list can be utilized here, but it must also be revisited. With the Souter vacancy, there was little doubt that a woman would be nominated and, from among them, Sotomayor clearly represented the best political choice. With the Stevens vacancy, sex is no longer a dominant factor and attention will be given to both women and men who otherwise meet the qualification criteria of the president. The potential for controversy is greater than it was with the Souter vacancy (refer to the setting links) because of the president's sinking approval rating and the loss of a Senate seat during the past year. Still, the environment remains positive for getting through the Senate just about any nominee the president wishes. It all depends what kind of political skirmish the president is willing to endure—a full-scale battle or one that involves the normal sniping that occurs in any event, evening choosing a dog as a family pet. The safer path is to choose a sitting federal judge or one who has otherwise been involved in the judicial process at very high levels (the solicitor general, for example). The bolder path is to eschew this formula and go with one of the many qualified individuals from academe (FDR's appointment of Felix Frankfurter) or the political sphere (Frank Murphy and Earl Warren served as governors) or the state courts (Sandra O'Connor). See The President link for a more detailed examination of the factors affecting a president's nomination decision. The NominationIt was only a year ago that the Obama team gathered its information on potential nominees to the Court, resulting in the rather straight-forward choice of Sonia Sotomayor, restoring a second woman on the Court and the first Hispanic. Given the retiring justice was Stevens, the leader of what passes for a liberal bloc on the Court, Obama had a lot of flexibility for this nomination. This appointment will not tip the balance of the Court and the Republicans remain a distinct minority in the Senate. The president can lose the nomination only by appointing someone who alienates his own party or someone whom the opposition could characterize as outside the mainstream, presumably just too-damn liberal. Of course, inadequate vetting could produce a nominee with a skeleton that would prevent confirmation by the Senate. The goal for this president, as with most all before him, is to get someone on the Court who will be sufficiently like-minded to him in his or her underlying ideology and jurisprudential philosophy.Attention focused immediately on judges Diane Wood (7th Circuit) and Merrick Garland (DC Circuit), along with Solicitor-General Elena Kagan and Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano. Other names surfacing as short-list individuals were Governor Jennifer Granholm, former Georgia Chief Justice Leah Ward Sears, and Judge Sidney Thomas from the Ninth Circuit. In his appointments to the federal courts, Obama has cared less about age than his predecessor, his appointees averaging in their mid-50s, almost six years older than the Bush appointees. Nonetheless, the potentially long-term impact of a Supreme Court nomination makes age a greater consideration. Wood, Garland, and Thomas are seven to ten years older than Kagan. That Kagan, in fact, is the youngest of the potential nominees could not have been overlooked by those advising the president and, most likely, by the president himself. The InterimThe process now moves into the post-nomination period. The nominee has been introduced to the American public, but the president's team and the various advocacy groups that pay attention to nominations are already well-prepared. The president's praise for the nominee will have to share media space with various spokespersons of political opposition groups. They will raise questions and concerns, expressing hope that the Senate will scrutinize closely the qualifications of this nominee. Democratic senators will generally praise the nomination, urge a smooth process resulting in the ability of the nominee to assume her position on the Court in a timely fashion. Republican senators will speak largely to the need for careful scrutiny and use the opportunity to reinforce their claim that judicial restraint is the cornerstone of Republican and conservative jurisprudence.If you go the advocacy groups page on this site, you can link to different groups and see their responses to the nomination and, in all likelihood, find an appeal for financial support to help them in their respective causes to support or oppose the nomination.
Updated on May 9, 2010 by GW |
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