Where does this end? What keeps this principle from extending to a President's entire term, as opposed to just the last year? If Democrats ever retake the Senate, why should they ever hold hearings for a single Republican judicial appointment, let alone confirm one? Should judicial appointments just sit vacant until president and Senate are from the same party?

I think it's a perversion of the "advice and consent" language from the Constitution for the Senate to simply stonewall a nomination process until they get the President they want.

You're right. Unfortunately this is a natural result of having so many different veto points in this process and in the US governmental system in general.

I was just thinking today about why Canada's Supreme Court isn't remotely politicized in the same way as the US. Part of it may be that we're just not as partisan, but I think the main thing is that with our parliamentary system, if the party in power has a majority—which they do the majority of the time—they can basically pass what laws they want. Of course, they generally refrain from doing deeply unpopular things since they'll pay for it at the next election, although even that does happen: eg. the Mulroney (conservative!) government implementing a 7% goods and services tax. Probably played a large part of them being out of power for a decade+ immediately following, but was great for the country fiscally from there forward.

Anyway, since the government can largely do what they want, there's much less need or reason to essentially try to enact 'legislation from the bench'. I couldn't even tell you the political leanings of our SC justices.

There are still plenty of downsides to this system of course (lack of proportional representation comes to mind), but it does appear to be more functional in a lot of ways than the US. And probably not by accident—the Canadian system was developed almost a hundred years after the US, and had it and other more recent governments as models; it was also soon after the US Civil War, which played a part in Canada adopting a strong federal system with less provincial power, relatively speaking.

Of course, it's easy to say all that. Much harder to actually enact significant reform!

As Republican Senator Richard Burr said in 2016, after Scalia died, "...And if Hillary Clinton becomes president, I am going to do everything I can do to make sure four years from now, we still got an opening on the Supreme Court."

At first I read your comment as “What keeps this principle from extending to a President’s entire team” and I recalled that Trump’s cabinet appointments were notoriously slow to get through the Senate, held up even by a Democratic minority.

McConnel had serious doubts that Obama’s nominee, Merrick Garland, would _fail_ to get a majority in the senate, so he forbade the nomination to come to a vote. So it’s a little different than you pose: you a pretending that Obama’s nomination came to a vote and lost (which would be entirely legitimate). The majority leader prevented that from even happening.

That is not what happened at all, he didn't hold a vote because he didn't want to and used an excuse that "Presidents shouldn't be able to nominate a SCOTUS judge in their last year". Now he's changing it to "majority party situation" and that is not what he said when he refused to hold any confirmations. He is a sneaky snakey weasel and has been for decades.

Re-read the comment.

Sorry, if that were true, then obama could've nominated someone else.

Why would you need to block a vote you know you will win?

> [if] Obama had a Democratic Senate majority when he nominated Merrick Garland…

With a Democratic majority, Garland would have been confirmed. It's exactly because no Democratic majority in the Senate existed that Garland wasn't even voted on (and actually didn't even get a hearing).

> he simply could not get him confirmed

That's hardly the whole truth. McConnell refused to even hold hearings.

Legislative leadership at all levels of US government often do not allow hearings, floor debates, or floor votes when they know the issue will fail.

Sure, but the fundamental issue isn't McConnell, it's that Obama seriously weakened Democratic control of both the House and Senate during his time as President. As a result, his party lost a Supreme Court pick.

"Elections have consequences" and all that.

No, the fundamental issue is that McConnell was the first and only Senate Leader to ever prevent a vote on a SCOTUS nominee, so there were no confirmation hearings at all.

> There have been 37 unsuccessful nominations to the Supreme Court of the United States. Of these, 11 nominees were rejected in Senate roll-call votes, 11 were withdrawn by the president, and 15 lapsed at the end of a session of Congress.

Note: 15 nominations were not voted on by the Senate, including Merrick Garland.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unsuccessful_nominations_to_th...

In all of those 15 they had hearings. They simply didn't get to the point of voting on confirmation.

McConnell prevented senators from voting on a candidate they would have approved. This is hijacking representatives' voice because you're afraid to hear it.

Ah yes, the good old "should have been so weak", "deserved it" victim-blaming.