In remarks Tuesday at Georgetown University law school, Justice Samuel Alito sounded resigned to spending the rest of this year in a court whose members are locked in a 4-4 tie.
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Sandoval, meanwhile, said he hasn’t been contacted about any potential nomination.
President Barack Obama has a presidential obligation to nominate a new Justice, and it is the Senate’s job to take a vote on that choice, whether they like it or not.
Should Obama nominate someone like Sandoval, he might be able to win over some Republican senators.
The letter says the committee “will not hold hearings on any Supreme Court nominee until after our next President is sworn in on January, 20, 2017”.
News broke earlier this afternoon that the White House is considering Republican Gov. Brian Sandoval of Nevada for the Supreme Court vacancy.
Brian Sandoval is on the White House’s shortlist to nominate him to the Supreme Court to fill the seat left vacant by the late Antonin Scalia, according to two unnamed sources cited by the Washington Post.
Within a day, however, the White House had drawn its battle lines: Obama and his allies declared that the Constitution gives him the right to find a replacement, the Senate is duty-bound to start confirmation hearings and to do otherwise would be Republican obstructionism. Other Republican Senators, such as Orrin Hatch and Dan Coates, have now responded in the same way.
Sandoval is popularly seen by some key Democrats as maybe the main nominee President Obama might choose who might open the Republican blockage up in the Senate.
Even the prospect of his nomination poses a hard dilemma for Senate Republicans who have promised not to consider any nomination before November’s elections. “And we made the decision that this was about principle, not the personality”, Coats said.
“I think it will be very hard for Mr. McConnell to explain how the the public concludes that this person is very well qualified that the Senate should stand in the way simply for political reasons”, he said. “I say to my friend, don’t continue down this path. Reject this record-setting obstruction and just do your job as a powerful chairman of the Judiciary Committee”. Republicans point out it’s been almost eight decades since a nomination occurred and was filled in the same election year.
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In 2005, President George W. Bush appointed Sandoval as a U.S. District Judge and was unanimously confirmed by the U.S. Senate.
