Hanging Judges

Patrick Leahy can’t stop bragging. “No ‘iffy’ nominees are going to get through now,” he crowed to the New York Times on March 24 after Democrats appeared to have successfully blocked the nomination of Professor Bernard Siegan to the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals. “The Administration knows it has to send us consensus candidates.” Just a year earlier, the Democratic senator from Vermont warned an audience at Georgetown Law School that the Democrats were ready to play “hardball” with judicial nominees. He wasn’t kidding.

In 1987, on regaining control of the Senate Judiciary Committee, the Democrats set up a special unit of several full-time staffers to investigate nominees. Within six months, Robert Bork’s nomination had been crushed, and the campaign to “scrutinize” other nominees into oblivion was in high gear. The payoff is praise from Democratic special-interest groups; the price is protracted delays and spurious charges against nominees—leaving the nominees in limbo.

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Mark Cunningham

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Patrick Leahy can’t stop bragging. “No ‘iffy’ nominees are going to get through now,” he crowed to the New York Times on March 24 after Democrats appeared to have successfully blocked the nomination of Professor Bernard Siegan to the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals. “The Administration knows it has to send us consensus candidates.” Just a year earlier, the Democratic senator from Vermont warned an audience at Georgetown Law School that the Democrats were ready to play “hardball” with judicial nominees. He wasn’t kidding.

In 1987, on regaining control of the Senate Judiciary Committee, the Democrats set up a special unit of several full-time staffers to investigate nominees. Within six months, Robert Bork’s nomination had been crushed, and the campaign to “scrutinize” other nominees into oblivion was in high gear. The payoff is praise from Democratic special-interest groups; the price is protracted delays and spurious charges against nominees—leaving the nominees in limbo.