{"id":3613,"date":"2016-04-12T18:26:55","date_gmt":"2016-04-12T23:26:55","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/napervilledemocrats.org\/ntdo\/?p=3613"},"modified":"2016-12-21T16:42:32","modified_gmt":"2016-12-21T21:42:32","slug":"constitution-loving-republicans-flaunt-constitution-to-protect-their-party-interests","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/napervilledemocrats.org\/ntdo\/constitution-loving-republicans-flaunt-constitution-to-protect-their-party-interests\/","title":{"rendered":"Constitution-Loving Republicans Flout Constitution to Protect their Party Interests"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"obama-at-uc-law\"<\/a>

President Obama last week at U of Chicago Law School \/ Photo Credit: Chicago Tribune<\/p><\/div>\n

President Obama spoke\u00a0last week\u00a0at the U of Chicago Law School<\/a> (where he used to teach constitutional law) to, among other things, promote his Supreme Court nominee, Merrick Garland.<\/p>\n

I enjoyed the quip in response to a question about how Judge Garland would increase the diversity of the court:\u00a0“Well, he’s from Skokie.” \u00a0Heh. \u00a0It was funny when I heard it on the radio. \u00a0(Read the article for context.<\/a>)<\/p>\n

But of course the point is the Judge Garland deserves at least a consideration, which\u00a0the GOP has said it will not grant him, or anyone put forward by this president:<\/p>\n

“Merrick Garland is an extraordinary jurist who is indisputably qualified to serve on the highest court of the land and nobody really argues otherwise,” Obama said.<\/p>\n

Citing Senate Republican leader Mitch McConnell’s vow not to allow confirmations on any nominee put forth by Obama to replace the late Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia, Obama said “what’s not acceptable is not giving (Garland) a vote, not giving him a hearing, not meeting with him” and trying to “nullify” the ability of a president to make an appointment.<\/p>\n

“If you start getting into a situation where the process of appointing judges is so broken, so partisan, that an eminently qualified jurist cannot even get a hearing, then we are going to see the kind of sharp partisan polarization that has come to characterize our electoral politics seeping into our judicial system,” the president said.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

There’s been a lot written about the ever-more-brazen obstruction and plain disrespect on display from the modern GOP. \u00a0They started out claiming that it would be “unprecedented” to approve a Supreme Court nominee in the last year of a president’s term, but the facts don’t bear out that nonsensical claim<\/a>. \u00a0(The Senate has never taken more than 125 days to vote on a president’s nominee.<\/a>)<\/p>\n

Now they’re just saying that they think “the people” should weigh in on such a big decision. \u00a0As though the people haven’t already spoken by electing Obama\u00a0twice. \u00a0And besides, for people who claim to so revere the Constitution, you might think they’d be given some pause by the fact that the Constitution goes to great lengths to insulate the judiciary from the popular voice (as Garry Wills points out in <\/a>this<\/a> great piece from the NYRB<\/a>\u00a0– emphasis added<\/strong><\/span>):<\/p>\n

… Senator Mitch McConnell said this will let the American people \u201chave a voice\u201d in who the new justice will be. Senator Kelly Ayotte said \u201cAmericans deserve an opportunity to weigh in\u201d on the matter. And Senator Ted Cruz, the presidential candidate, Senate Judiciary Committee member, and self-styled guardian of the Constitution, wrote on Twitter, \u201cWe owe it to him, [Scalia] & the Nation, for the Senate to ensure that the next President names his replacement.\u201d That is, we owe it to the archetypal originalist, where the Constitution is concerned, to ignore and defy the original Constitution<\/span>.<\/strong><\/p>\n

One thing the framers of the Constitution set out to prevent was a popular say in who should be a Supreme Court justice. The aim of the document was to ensure there would be an independent judiciary\u2014independent of Congress (by ensuring justices\u2019 salaries), independent of changing administrations (by granting them life tenure), and not subject to popular election. This ideal could not be perfectly reached, and changes in the Constitution have made it even harder to attain. But those who profess an absolute devotion to the Constitution should at least pay it some lip service<\/span>.<\/strong><\/p>\n

…<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

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More on the issue:<\/p>\n