Sunday, July 8, 2018

Don't put your hopes in the Dems

If and when McConnell carries through on this promise [to schedule the Supreme Court Justice nominee’s confirmation hearings for this fall, before the midterm elections], Senate Democrats should immediately file a federal lawsuit against him for violating the so-called “McConnell Rule.” (According to this rule, as McConnell himself stated on Feb. 13, 2016, “The American people should have a voice in the selection of their next Supreme Court Justice.”) The issue — whether the McConnell Rule is now binding precedent — would not be political (and therefore “nonjusticiable”) but rather fundamentally legal (and therefore “justiciable”).

[...]

Like these non-statutory propositions, parliamentary rules announced by Senate majority leaders constitute laws as well. As a result, they are binding on future legislators unless and until they are explicitly overturned.

[...]

Importantly, if McConnell still were to maintain that the McConnell Rule is not law, then the so-called “Biden Rule” was not law either. But if the Biden Rule was not law, then McConnell’s claim on March 16, 2016, to be bound by it — “The Senate will continue to observe the Biden Rule so that the American people have a voice in this momentous decision” — was a lie so monumental that the entire process by which Justice Neil Gorsuch ascended to the high court would have to be deemed constitutionally invalid and, therefore, subject to retraction.

  The Hill
As I always say...

...but hey, do what you want...you will anyway.

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