Pardon the overkill, but just a few more points (in addition, that is, to those in point 1.a here) on law professor Geoffrey Stone’s wildly distorted claim that “Senate Republicans” pioneered the filibuster against a court of appeals nominee in 1980 when they “unsuccessfully tried to block” President Carter’s nomination of Stephen Breyer to the First Circuit:

1. A Democrat who followed Breyer’s nomination closely in 1980 writes to me (emphasis in original):

It is a long story, but you have the denouements right—indeed, the appointment after the election was unprecedented—and the direct result of Senator Thurmond’s willingness to support Breyer’s nomination.
Thurmond’s willingness to permit this one nominee to go through during the interregnum was an act of extraordinary generosity by the Committee’s principal Republican, in a gesture of bipartisanship in support of the Committee’s former counsel and a gesture of friendship to his Democratic counterpart, Senator Edward Kennedy.
In sum, the confirmation process for Breyer, far from being a Republican effort to stop Breyer, was the exact opposite of that—an appointment made possible by the Republicans.

2. According to a New York Times article dated December 10, 1980, the attempted “filibuster” of Breyer was initiated “by Senator Robert Morgan, Democrat of North Carolina, who was upset because Mr. Breyer, chief counsel to the judiciary committee, had played a leading role in blocking the nomination of his campaign manager, Charles Winberry, to be a Federal district judge because of alleged ethical indiscretions.” (Emphasis added.)

3. A Senate staffer very involved in the filibuster fights against President George W. Bush’s appellate nominees informs me that Teddy Kennedy—Breyer’s boss and sponsor in 1980—never claimed during those fights that Republicans had tried to filibuster Breyer.