Stevenson’s army, September 19

The death of Justice Ginsburg will confront the Senate with the task of choosing a successor. While the end to possible filibusters of such nominations makes it likely that Leader McConnell will be able to get approval of the president’s nominee before Thanksgiving, you can expect contentious debate, clashing Constitutional arguments, and parliamentary maneuvers. This CRS report has good background on the process. But note this historical point: Before 1916, the Judiciary Committee considered Supreme Court nominations behind closed doors. Thus, until that year, there are no entries in the “Public hearing date(s)” column. Rather, committee sessions on Court nominations typically were limited to committee members discussing and voting on a nominee in executive session, without hearing testimony from outside witnesses. In 1916, for the first time, the committee held open confirmation hearings on a Supreme Court nomination—that of Louis D. Brandeis to be an Associate Justice—at which outside witnesses (but not the nominee) testified. More days of public hearings (19) were held on the Brandeis nomination than on any Supreme Court nomination since. The Brandeis hearings, however, did not set immediately into place a new policy of open confirmation hearings for Supreme Court nominations, since each of the next six nominations (during the years 1916 to 1923) was either considered directly by the Senate, without referral to the Judiciary Committee, or was acted on by the committee without the holding of confirmation hearings.
From 1925 to 1946, public confirmation hearings for Supreme Court nominations became the more common, if not invariable, practice of the Judiciary Committee. In 1925, Harlan F. Stone became the first Supreme Court nominee to appear in person and testify at his confirmation hearings. During the next two decades, the Stone nomination was one of 11 Court nominations that received public confirmation hearings before either the full Judiciary Committee or a Judiciary subcommittee, while five other nominations did not receive public hearings. One of the five nominees not receiving a public confirmation hearing was Senator James F. Byrnes, whose nomination in 1941, as noted earlier, was considered directly by the Senate without referral to the Judiciary Committee. From the first Supreme Court appointments in 1789 to 2017, Presidents have made 162 nominations to the Court. Table 1 shows, in the “Final action by Senate or President” column, that the Senate confirmed 125 of these nominations, or roughly three-fourths. Of the 37 nominations that were not confirmed, 11 were rejected by the Senate (all in roll-call votes), 11 were withdrawn by the President, and 15 lapsed at the end of a session of Congress without a Senate vote cast on whether to confirm. The 37 nominations not confirmed by the Senate represented 32 individuals, some of whom were nominated more than once. Six individuals whose initial nominations were not confirmed were later renominated and confirmed for positions on the Court.

WSJ says the Saudi Royal Family is divided over policy toward Israel.
The other day I sent a story about how rich the Taliban is. WSJ today says ISIS is also flush with cash.
A think tank study says the Intelligence Community doesn’t really know what its customers want.
A Columbia law prof uses the occasion of the dedication of the memorial to Dwight Eisenhower on the National Mall to reflect on Ike’s view of war powers.
I think Eisenhower should be praised for insisting on congressional approval of major military actions.

My SAIS colleague Charlie Stevenson distributes this almost daily news digest of foreign/defense/national security policy to “Stevenson’s army” via Googlegroups. I plan to republish here. To get Stevenson’s army by email, send a blank email (no subject or text in the body) to stevensons-army+subscribe@googlegroups.com. You’ll get an email confirming your join request. Click “Join This Group” and follow the instructions to join. Once you have joined, you can adjust your email delivery preferences (if you want every email or a digest of the emails).