Courts should be Tell Your Senators to Do Their Job
By
Robert Reich
Watch this video on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l014xi25v7Y
The Constitution of the United States is clear: Article II Section 2 says the President “shall nominate, and by and with the advice and consent of the Senate, shall appoint … judges to the Supreme Court.”
It
doesn’t say the President can’t appoint in the final year of his term of
office. In fact, a third of all U.S. presidents have appointed a Supreme Court
justice in an election year. Yet many Republicans argue that no appointment can
be made in the election year.
And
the Constitution doesn’t give the Senate leader the right to delay and obstruct
the rest of the Senate from voting on a President’s nominee. Yet this is what
the current Republican leadership argues.
In
refusing to vote or even hold a hearing on the President’s nominee to the
Supreme Court, the GOP is abdicating its constitutional responsibility. It’s
not doing its job.
Senate Republicans are trying to justify their refusal by referring to a comment Joe Biden made when he chaired the Senate Judiciary Committee in 1992, urging then-President Bush to hold off on nominating a Supreme Court justice until after the election.
But
Biden was speaking hypothetically – there was no nominee before the Senate at
that time – and he concluded by saying that if the President were to nominate
someone he was sure the Senate and the President could come to an agreement.
This
fight has huge implications. A new Supreme Court justice might be able to
reverse “Citizens United” and remove the poison of big money from our
democracy. It might reverse “Shelby v. Holder,” and resurrect the Voting Rights
Act.
And
think of the cases coming up – on retaining a woman’s right to choose, on the
rights of teachers and other public employees to unionize, on the President’s
authority to fight climate change, and the rights of countless
Americans with
little or no power in a system where more and more power is going to the top.
That’s the traditional role of the Supreme Court – to protect the powerless
from the powerful.
Which
is exactly why the Republicans don’t want to fulfill their constitutional
responsibility and allow a vote on the President’s nominee.
So
what can you do? There’s only one response – the same response you made when
Republicans shut down the government because they didn’t get their way over the
debt ceiling: You let them know they’ll be held accountable.
Public
pressure is the only way to get GOP senators to release their choke hold on the
Supreme Court. Public pressure is up to you. Call your senators now, and tell
them you want them to do their job.
ROBERT
B. REICH is Chancellor’s Professor of Public Policy at the University of
California at Berkeley and Senior Fellow at the Blum Center for Developing
Economies. He served as Secretary of Labor in the Clinton administration, for which
Time Magazine named him one of the ten most effective cabinet secretaries of
the twentieth century. He has written fourteen books, including the best
sellers “Aftershock, “The Work of Nations," and "Beyond
Outrage," and, his most recent, "Saving Capitalism." He is also
a founding editor of the American Prospect magazine, chairman of Common Cause,
a member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, and co-creator of the
award-winning documentary, INEQUALITY FOR ALL.