By David B. Rivkin, Jr., and Andrew M. Grossman

19 September 2020 in the Wall Street Journal

The week after President Jimmy Carter lost his 1980 re-election bid, he announced the judicial nomination of a close ally of Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Ted Kennedy. The nomination sailed through the Senate, which confirmed the First U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals judge 80-10 less than a month later, six weeks before Inauguration Day. That nominee, Stephen Breyer, now sits on the Supreme Court.

Justice Breyer’s second nomination, in 1994, got more attention, but his first in 1980 neatly illustrates a constitutional principle: The president’s authority to make judicial nominations, and the Senate’s power to weigh them, is unaffected by the electoral calendar.

Minutes after the news broke Friday that Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg had died, Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer declared his opposition to considering any nominee “until we have a new president.” The argument is an appeal to precedent; Mr. Schumer’s tweet was lifted from a statement by Majority Leader Mitch McConnell after Justice Antonin Scalia’s death in February 2016.

Then, the Senate withheld its consent from President Obama’s nominee, Judge Merrick Garland. Mr. McConnell’s rationale was that the voters should have a say in selecting the next justice. Put aside that Mr. Schumer and his caucus were on the other side of the issue four years ago. The important question is: What’s the right precedent?

It isn’t 2016. In the realm of Supreme Court nominations, practice has long followed principle. Twenty-five times presidents have made nominations to fill Supreme Court vacancies that arose in presidential election years, and 21 times the Senate confirmed the nominee. The general rule is that when there is a vacancy on the nation’s highest court, the political branches will fill it.

At the same time, the Senate has long observed a narrow exception to that rule—one also guided by constitutional concern—and that’s what was in play in 2016. When the nation chooses a president and a Senate, it makes its choice about who wields the power and bears the responsibility to pick and confirm judges. But when the president and Senate have divergent views on judges and judicial philosophy, there’s no clear mandate on what kinds of judges ought to be confirmed. For well over a century—the last exception was Chief Justice Melville Fuller in 1888, during President Cleveland’s first term—the Senate hasn’t confirmed a Supreme Court nominee chosen in an election year by a president of the opposite party. That’s why, in 2016, Mr. McConnell let voters break the stalemate.

This exception was popularized in 1992 by Sen. Joe Biden, then chairman of the Judiciary Committee. He urged President George H.W. Bush to refrain from making any Supreme Court nominations in that election year. What made 1992 different from other election years, Mr. Biden explained, was that “divided Government” reflected an absence of a “nationwide consensus” on constitutional philosophy. “Action on a Supreme Court nomination must be put off until after the election campaign is over,” the future vice president insisted. No vacancy arose until 1993, when Bill Clinton was in the White House and Ginsburg’s nomination easily passed a Democratic Senate. But the Biden rule fit 2016 to a tee.

It’s especially ill-suited to 2020. Not only does the same party control the White House and the Senate, but the 2016 and 2018 elections were both unusually focused on the issues of constitutional philosophy and judicial selection, owing to the Scalia vacancy and the Democrats’ smear campaign against Brett Kavanaugh. The voters made their choice, sending Donald Trump to the White House with his list of prospective nominees and a Republican majority to the Senate. There’s no stalemate for the voters to break this time around.

There’s not even a serious debate over judicial philosophy. Mr. Trump has maintained and expanded his list of prospective nominees, but Mr. Biden refuses to release one. That reflects the reality that, while Democrats bemoan the originalist bent of Mr. Trump’s picks, they embrace no competing doctrine, only the insistence that judicial power be wielded to achieve their political ends. Their instant opposition to any Trump nominee is of a piece: the exercise of power divorced from principle.

Another bit of history: In 1980, Mr. Biden voted to confirm Judge Breyer.

Mr. Rivkin served at the Justice Department and the White House Counsel’s Office. Mr. Grossman is an adjunct scholar at the Cato Institute. Both practice appellate and constitutional law in Washington.

Source: https://www.wsj.com/articles/why-the-biden-rule-doesnt-apply-in-2020-11600545795