|
Re: My God, you are an idiot.
Quote:
Originally Posted by sgtclub
It started with Bork.
|
Only if you just disregard what came before. Before Carter, the Senate played a very big role in selecting federal judges. Carter instituted selection committees to pick the judges on merit, and diminished greatly the home-state Senator's role in picking a nominee. This was new. Reagan took this newly centralized power and added an ideological element to it, looking for conservatives. This was new. The Senate then -- particularly with Bork -- acted on its power to block nominees. This was new, too. Insofar as its true to say that before Bork, the Senate hadn't blocked nominees for ideological reasons, that is basically because until Reagan, judges weren't getting picked for ideological reasons but rather because they were tight with a Senator. What the Senate did with Bork was the obvious reaction to what Reagan was doing with Article III appointments.
__________________
“It was fortunate that so few men acted according to moral principle, because it was so easy to get principles wrong, and a determined person acting on mistaken principles could really do some damage." - Larissa MacFarquhar
|
