The Russell Senate Office Building, Washington, DC (Steve Heap/Shutterstock.com).Democrats Need a New Supreme Court Nomination Playbook
The interior of the historic Hurva Synagogue in the Jewish Quarter of the Old City of Jerusalem. Image: Roman Yanushevsky / Shutterstock.com
The old Democratic playbook on Republican Supreme Court nominations will no longer work for the Gorsuch confirmation hearings. Democrats used to spend much of their time talking about the importance of precedent and demanding that nominees follow it. The point, of course, was to protect one particular precedent above all—Roe v. Wade—and more generally keep alive the precedents favoring liberalism that were minted in the Warren and to some extent Burger and even Rehnquist eras.
But this approach no longer fits the times. One reason is multiplication of precedents that the Democratic base wants overruled. Citizens United is the best example. Hillary Clinton was even going to make its overruling a litmus test of her judicial appointments. But there are others too. Senator Schumer has already complained in the context of this nomination about Shelby County v Holder, which found a portion of the Voting Rights Act unconstitutional. And few cases enraged the left like Hobby Lobby, which held that closely held corporation had religious freedom rights under the Religious Freedom Restoration Act. More generally, given that liberals have not been a majority on Court in several generations, there is growing body of precedent they do not like.
And much of the Democratic party too is changing to become more openly radical. Thus, its base is not satisfied with simply standing on past precedent while hoping that the Court will drift their way. It wants the Court to be a more active partner in progressive social change.
This creates a dilemma for Democrats. The very important advantage of prioritizing precedent is that that appears to make them adherents of following the law, where the law is defined as the past case law of the Supreme Court.
Chuck Schumer Wants to Raise Your Airfare
One of the Carter administration’s great achievements was deregulation, and in no sector was the success greater than in the airlines industry. The result was more competition and lower fares that democratized travel. It is a troubling sign of America’s lurch from liberty and free markets that Democratic legislators are trying to re-regulate the airlines and that the Obama administration is dampening competition.
The most egregious offender is Chuck Schumer, the incoming Democratic leader of the Senate (he will be majority leader if the prediction markets are right). He wants to regulate the width and leg room of airline seats. This is hardly a safety issue: the FAA has not expressed concern, and airline travel has never been safer with no fatalities on domestic commercial passenger flights last year.
Airlines already offer more room in first class and economy-plus for additional money. Are consumers not capable of choosing how much leg room they want to pay for? What other decisions does Schumer want to make for us?
