A Note on Senatorial Consideration of Supreme Court Nominees

Abstract

If a President should desire, and if chance should give him the opportunity, to change entirely the character of the Supreme Court, shaping it after his own political image, nothing would stand in his way except the United States Senate. Few constitutional questions are then of more moment than the question whether a Senator properly may, or even at some times in duty must, vote against a nominee to that Court, on the ground that the nominee holds views which, when transposed into judicial decisions, are likely, in the Senator's judgment, to be very bad for the country. It is the purpose of this piece to open discussion of this question.