When I first started blogging, I wrote a great deal about judicial nominations and filibusters. I have largely ignored this issue during the election season, but with the news of the Chief Justice’s health looking increasingly discouraging, we will soon be in for a possible confirmation war over the Chief Justice of the Supreme Court. Much of the news concerns whether Republican Senator Arlen Specter will be the new chair of the judicary commitee. It seemed like a sure thing, until Specter made some remarks about the difficulty of confirming an anti-abortion candidate. See this New York Times report. Now some conservatives don’t want him to head the committee, and there are suggestions of a strong conservative as the new Chief Justice. The Wall Street Journal suggested Miguel Estrada, and Howard Bashman has suggested Fifth Circuit judge Edith Jones for Chief Justice, which would surely be a controversial move given her stance on abortion.
Specter may actually provide the only hope of breaking some of the deadlock over judicial confirmations. If he is not chair, Larry Solum may well be right that we face a downward spiral over the process, which could well lead to a change in the Senate filibuster rules and a breakdown of work at the Senate.
I won’t be sending my blog posts on confirmation issues to the election law list because this is just not germane enough to the topic of election law. You can find such posts periodically on the blog here.