There will be an opening on the United States Supreme Court soon, and President Joe Biden has vowed to nominate a black woman to fill the vacancy created by the retirement of Justice Stephen Breyer.
The news cycle soon rolled down a familiar road: How will Republicans line up to block Biden’s nomination? How will Democrats angle to force a nominee through by the narrowest margin?
So much for a nonpartisan judiciary.
Ironically, it is Breyer who has crusaded convince the public, despite all evidence to the contrary, that the nation’s high court isn’t just as political as the presidents who appoint them.
Breyer warned in a speech at Harvard Law School that seeing judges and justices as mere “politicians in robes” threatens what he loves to say is a nonpartisan judiciary.
The public respectfully dissents.
A Pew Research study out last week said 84 percent of Americans agree that justices on the high court shouldn’t bring their personal politics to the bench, yet only 16 percent believe justices do a good or excellent job of checking their political bias at the door.
It’s no wonder then that last September, the court’s public approval rating hit the lowest point since Gallup began tracking in 2000. Just 40 percent approve of the job the court’s doing. Nearly a majority said they have little or no confidence in the court as an institution, a rapid erosion in public support.
Breyer is one of three justices appointed by a Democratic president compared with six appointed by Republicans, so his successor won’t change the court’s ideological margin, or — sorry Justice Breyer — partisan makeup.
After Breyer was nominated to the court by President Bill Clinton in 1994, he was confirmed by a vote of 89-7. Can you imagine a nominee to the U.S. Supreme Court, nominated by a president from either party, achieving that level of support today? Could any nominee, no matter how respected and qualified, garner that level of support in our superheated, toxic political environment?
Which brings us to Biden’s promise to nominate a black woman justice.
Conservatives chastised Biden for making such a campaign pledge and then vowing fulfill it. Of course, had Biden backtracked, they would have slammed him for that.
But some senators have already prejudged Biden’s nominee. Sen. Ted Cruz, R-Texas, for instance, said this: “The fact that he’s willing to make a promise at the outset, that it must be a Black woman, I gotta say that’s offensive.”
The voters felt otherwise when Biden was elected after he made that promise loud and clear on the campaign trail.
Besides, Biden was just taking a page out of the playbook of former Republican President Ronald Reagan, who while running for president in 1980 said this: “It is time for a woman to sit among our highest jurists,” and promised to appoint the first woman to the high court.
Reagan kept his promise, nominating Sandra Day O’Connor. Not a single senator voted against her confirmation.
How our nation has changed, and in this case, not for the better.
Senators have an opportunity to restore a shred of confidence in the court in the upcoming confirmation process. They should wait for Biden’s nominee, objectively weigh her qualifications during confirmation hearings, then decide whether she is qualified to be a justice.
