Too Much Advice and Not Enough Consent: How the Senate's Questions in a Highly Publicized Confirmation Process Undermines Presidential Appointment Authority and Judicial Independence

• Pages: 655-674
• Date: 01 July 2024
• Published date: 01 July 2024
• Author: Jerry Blake Blevins
• Subject Matter: Administrative & Public Law

NOTES

Too Much Advice and Not Enough Consent: How

the Senate’s Questions in a Highly Publicized

Conf‌irmation Process Undermines Presidential

Appointment Authority and Judicial Independence

JERRY BLAKE BLEVINS*

TABLE OF CONTENTS

I. INTRODUCTION. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 656

II. SEPARATION OF POWERS AND THE MEANING AND APPLICATION

OF THE APPOINTMENTS CLAUSE IN THE NOMINATION AND

CONFIRMATION OF THE FEDERAL JUDICIARY . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 657

A. The Appointment of Supreme Court Justices and General

Separation of Powers Principles . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 657

B. Debate of the Appointments Clause at the Constitutional

Convention . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 658

C. Ratif‌ication of the Appointments Clause. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 661

D. The Development of the Senate Conf‌irmation from

Ratif‌ication to the Twentieth Century. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 662

1. Post-Ratif‌ication and the Eighteenth Century........... 662

2. The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries .............. 663

E. O’Connor, Bork, and the Advent of the Modern-Day

Senate Conf‌irmation Hearing . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 664

1. Televised Conf‌irmation Hearings..................... 664

2. “Borked:” the Controversial Failed Conf‌irmation of

Robert Bork ....................................... 664

3. Post-Bork Hearings................................. 666

a. John G. Roberts, Jr. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 666

b. Clarence Thomas . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 668

* Jerry Blake Blevins is a member of the Georgetown University Law Center’s class of 2024. He is

Editor-in-Chief of the Georgetown Journal of Law & Public Policy, Volume 22. © 2024, Jerry Blake

Blevins.

655

c. Samuel A. Alito, Jr. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 669

d. Sonia Sotomayor . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 669

e. Elena Kagan . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 670

f. Neil M. Gorsuch . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 670

g. Brett M. Kavanaugh . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 671

h. Amy Coney Barrett . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 671

i. Ketanji Brown Jackson . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 671

III. HOW MODERN-DAY CONFIRMATION HEARINGS DIVERGE FROM AN

APPROPRIATE “ADVICE AND CONSENT” POWER . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 672

IV. CONCLUSION . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 674

I. INTRODUCTION

Senate conf‌irmation hearings have become quite the spectacle over the past

few decades. What once was a process without much fanfare has now become a

cable broadcast favorite. How did we go from secretive, black-box voting based

on a candidate’s qualif‌ications and political popularity to a system where

Senators attempt to glean from a nominee’s conf‌irmation hearing how that nomi-

nee would rule in any and every case that comes before them?

The Senate, through questions about whether a nominee is an “originalist,”

“textualist,” “living constitutionalist,” “legal realist,” or other superlative, attempts

to perform exactly this type of appraisal. Similarly, when senators inquire into a

nominee’s opinion on already-decided cases, they are either trying to gauge the

likelihood that the nominee will overturn the precedent or preemptively pressure

them into not overruling the precedent. This paper seeks to show that when the

Senate engages in this behavior, it violates the separation of powers principles

embodied in the Constitution’s general governmental scheme as well as those

same principles enacted specif‌ically within the Appointments Clause.

Part II will discuss generally the separation of powers aim of the United States

Constitution, specif‌ically as it relates to an independent judiciary. It will then dis-

cuss the Appointments Clause, including the power of the Senate to provide

advice and consent, and what these powers were understood to consist of at the

time of the Constitutional Convention debates and the subsequent ratif‌ication of

the United States Constitution. It will also survey the application of the

Appointments Clause and senatorial practice from the eighteenth to the twentieth

century. Finally, it will discuss modern-day senatorial practice regarding the con-

f‌irmation process, providing examples of questions that demonstrate the Senate

has stepped outside its constitutional bounds. Part III will discuss specif‌ically

656 THE GEORGETOWN JOURNAL OF LAW & PUBLIC POLICY [Vol. 22:655