Filling the Supreme Court Vacancy
Floor Speech
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Mr. BLUMENTHAL. Mr. President, I am here today to urge this body to fulfill its constitutional duty and take action on the Supreme Court nominee who shortly will be submitted by President Obama. I come here not only as a U.S. Senator but also as a former Federal prosecutor, a U.S. attorney in Connecticut from 1977 to 1981, a former State attorney general for 20 years, and a veteran of four arguments before the U.S. Supreme Court. I am also here as a former law clerk to Justice Harry Blackmun, and I share with the Presiding Officer the experience of having had that supremely important and formative experience, and, of course, it shapes my view as well of the Court.
I have immense respect and awe for the position and power and eminence of the U.S. Supreme Court, its role in our democracy, and its history of scholarship and public service. I have the same admiration for Justice Antonin Scalia, and I take this moment to remember his uniquely American life.
As the son of an immigrant, he was a dedicated public servant, a gifted writer, and a powerful speaker. I heard him speak on a number of occasions and argued before him in the Court in a number of memorable exchanges. His sense of humor and his quickness of wit and insight remain with me now. As all of my colleagues will attest, he dedicated his life to serving the public, which can be demanding and difficult at times, but his life showed, as we know, that the difficulties and the demands are well worth the rewards. My thoughts are with his wife Maureen and his entire family.
My personal view, speaking only for myself, is that one way to honor Justice Scalia is to adhere to the Constitution, to follow its words, which are very explicit on the topic of nominating and confirming a Supreme Court Justice and which give us the role of advising and consenting after the President has nominated. I hope we will fulfill our constitutional duty to advise and consent--to do our job, literally, to do our job as we were elected and took an oath of office to do. That is what we are paid to do--our job as prescribed by the Constitution. I fundamentally reject the notion that the Senate's refusal to act, as laid out in no uncertain terms by my Republican colleagues, fulfills this obligation. In fact, the abdication of responsibility through this rejection is disrespectful to that document and to the Court itself.
President Obama has indicated that he is currently engaged in a thoughtful and deliberative process, working to select a nominee with the intellect and integrity that will persuade the American public and hopefully also the Senate to support his suggestion. His nomination would allow the Supreme Court to function again with the nine members who are essential to its deliberation.
The conclusions my colleagues advance during such a process will, of course, be to each of them to decide. I will be, in fact, among the most exacting and demanding of our colleagues who question that nominee in a hearing, who seek answers in screening and researching the expertise and experience of that person. In no way should the Judiciary Committee, on which I serve, or the U.S. Senate, where we all serve, act as a rubberstamp. No way. No rubberstamp. We must advise as well as consent, and advising means being demanding and careful. But I think we have an obligation to go through that process. We can't just say, sight unseen, no. We can't say that we are going to leave it to the next elected Senate or the next elected President. We have been elected and he has been elected to do our job.
The Supreme Court must have a full complement of Justices to effectively address some of the most complex issues and consequential legal challenges our Nation faces today. Put aside the merits of each-- whether it is immigration or affirmative action, women's reproductive rights, voting rights--decisions are needed. The lack of decision has consequences, just as elections have consequences.
Obstruction has consequences, too, and we cannot afford to weaken the Federal judiciary's capacity for effective governance. We can't allow a manufactured crisis in the Senate to plunge another branch of government into gridlock and to plague the judiciary with the same partisan paralysis that is so detested by the American people. In fact, the rejection of our constitutional responsibility to do our job would epitomize the gridlock and partisan contention that America finds so abhorrent today. Like my colleagues, I go around the State of Connecticut, and what people say to me more commonly than anything else is ``Why can't you do your job? Why can't you get stuff done?'' Let's get this done.
Statements by Majority Leader McConnell and Chairman Grassley, as well as a number of my other colleagues, have indicated that President Obama's nominee to the highest Court in the land should not even be considered, but turning our backs on that constitutional obligation to act would be equivalent to shutting down the government. It is of exactly the same kind of consequence. It may not be as far-reaching in its immediate effect, but it has the same long-term consequences, which are not merely to prevent decisions and actions from happening-- necessary decisions and actions--but also to undermine credibility and faith and trust in our government.
When it comes to the Congress or the President, maybe that credibility is of lesser importance, but it is a chief asset of our judiciary. The Supreme Court of the United States has no armies or police force. It commands the Nation's respect through its credibility. It enforces obeyance by virtue of that credibility.
This posture by my Republican colleagues threatens to drag a vital, nonpartisan institution into the morass of procedural gamesmanship and electoral mudslinging--the kind of game playing and gamesmanship that has so disillusioned and dismayed Americans more broadly.
As I have discussed this process with the people of Connecticut, I have heard outrage over this attempt to hamstring the Supreme Court, which looks like the recent, similarly illogical process of shutting down the government.
If my Republican colleagues want to reject a nominee, that is their right. After a hearing, they can vote no. They may have reason, and those reasons may be subjective or fact-based and objective. But to simply deny any consideration--even a meeting with a nominee--is stark obstructionism. It is an extreme version of the phenomenon that has frozen this body for much too long.
The majority campaigned in 2014 on restoring law and getting things done. They promised Americans everywhere that the new Senate majority would usher in an end to gridlock on Capitol Hill. We made some progress--too slow, too little--but moving in the right direction will be forestalled, if not doomed, by this obstructionism, and these promises would be broken if the Senate refuses to act.
At this critical time, we cannot hold the highest level of an entire branch of government hostage because of political gamesmanship. That is not what the American people elected us to do, and it is not what the American people deserve. Doing so would dishonor the bipartisan tradition of providing a hearing and a vote for a Supreme Court nominee, which is our constitutional obligation and has been followed by past Senates.
Even when a nominee during President Reagan's Presidency was nominated 14 months before the election and even though the vote came during the last year of that President's term in office, Justice Kennedy was confirmed. We should do the same. Why not? There is plenty of time between now and then to give deliberate due consideration to the President's nominee.
I hope that the outrage and outcry from the American people will persuade my colleagues to reconsider, reflect, and reverse this disastrous course. In fact, I believe they will relent because this course is dangerous to the Court, damaging to our Nation, and ultimately destructive to our democracy.
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