I am delighted to welcome Tom Jipping as a new contributor to Bench Memos. Over the last fifteen years, Tom served as Senator Hatch’s lead counsel on judicial nominations. I and others routinely drew on his expertise and his encyclopedic command of the Senate’s history on judicial confirmations. Now that he has joined the Heritage Foundation as deputy director of its Edwin Meese III Center for Legal and Judicial Studies, Tom will be able to offer his insights directly.