Patrick Leahy Damaged Judicial Confirmation Process

Senator Patrick Leahy (D., V.t.), who has announced that he will not seek a ninth term next year, will leave the judicial-confirmation process in much worse shape than he found it. Indeed, as a member of the Senate Judiciary Committee since 1979 — and as chairman for a combined ten years — Leahy has led a radical transformation of confirmation-process norms.

Leahy is hardly alone among politicians in demonstrating that actions speak louder than words. In his case, though, that contrast is especially pronounced because of the sheer amount of words he has dedicated to lecturing everyone about how he thinks the judicial-confirmation process ought to function. One of his frequent instructions, for example, is that confirming judicial nominees “should not be a partisan issue” or about “partisan point-scoring” (see, e.g., here and here).

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Thomas Jipping

Thomas Jipping is a senior legal fellow in the Edwin Meese III Institute for the Rule of Law at Advancing American Freedom.

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Senator Patrick Leahy (D., V.t.), who has announced that he will not seek a ninth term next year, will leave the judicial-confirmation process in much worse shape than he found it. Indeed, as a member of the Senate Judiciary Committee since 1979 — and as chairman for a combined ten years — Leahy has led a radical transformation of confirmation-process norms.

Leahy is hardly alone among politicians in demonstrating that actions speak louder than words. In his case, though, that contrast is especially pronounced because of the sheer amount of words he has dedicated to lecturing everyone about how he thinks the judicial-confirmation process ought to function. One of his frequent instructions, for example, is that confirming judicial nominees “should not be a partisan issue” or about “partisan point-scoring” (see, e.g., here and here).