M8 Blog: Supreme Court Nominations
Type of document Essay
1 Page Double Spaced
Subject area Political Science
Academic Level High School
Style MLA
References 1
Order description:
Throughout the semester you will be expected to participate in course blogs. You will post your responses to prompts and reply to other students’ posts. This forum is meant to provide you a venue for reflecting on course concepts, sharing your own examples of the concepts, and engaging in discussion with your fellow students.
Your analytical posts should be at least 2 paragraphs long and substantially targeted to address the central topic/theme of the blog. In your posts, you should use examples and citations to support your arguments. I strongly encourage you to make the posts lively and engaging. We want this to be fun for everyone to read. However, be mindful that your posts should be clearly written and detailed.
In addition to your own posts on the subject, it is expected that you will be writing responses to the posts from your classmates. You should regularly read and respond to this blog.
Grades for the blog will be assigned using the rubric attached to the blog. I strongly encourage you to review this rubric before starting the assignment.
Since federal judges hold lifetime appointments, filling vacancies can be a contentious and political affair. Consequently, presidents must not only consider the legal abilities of a nominee, but the political bent of the judge too. Even with this consideration, it is quite possible the Senate will not move to confirm the President’s nominee.
The Neil Gorsuch Supreme Court nomination, filling the vacancy left by Justice Scalia’s death, drew lots of public attention, but look back at the coverage surrounding the following nominations (Ginsburg, Bork, Thomas, and Garland) to get a broader sense of the politics at work in these cases. Notice that the first three cases involve Republican nominees dealing with a Senate under Democratic leadership. This is the opposite of the Garland case.
President Reagan’s Supreme Court nominee Douglas Ginsburg comes under attack for smoking marijuana in the 70s.
After a lengthy and contentious nomination process focused on Judge Robert Bork’s extensive legal writings, it appears unlikely the Senate will confirm him for the Supreme Court.
After a contentious nomination process, NBC’s John Cochran looks at the political fallout from the confirmation of Clarence Thomas to the Supreme Court.
President Barack Obama makes a new push for his Supreme Court nominee Merrick Garland, but prospects for his confirmation are still dim. Two of the few Republican senators Garland has met with, Jerry Moran and Lisa Murkowski, say they no longer support a confirmation hearing for Garland, while two other Republicans, Susan Collins and Mark Kirk say they do support a hearing.
For this blog, you are being asked to consider the type of judge you would appoint to the Supreme Court. To do this, respond to each of the following prompts.
Assume for a moment that you are president and there is a vacancy on the Supreme Court. What type of characteristics do you want your nominee to possess? What would you look for in their past as a sign that they would be a good appointment?
When making your appointment, would you give consideration to factors such as race, gender, or religion? Do these factors matter? Why?
Think about what key questions the Supreme Court will have to struggle with in the future. Describe the types of positions you would want your nominee to take on the issues likely to come before their courts within the next decade.
Finally, how would you propose getting your nominee confirmed when facing a Senate controlled by the opposite political party?
