Courts

Grassley Wants SCOTUS Justices To Retire Because Hypocrisy Is Real

Grassley's repudiation of his own prior statements is just sad.

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Senator Charles Grassley publicly called upon any Supreme Court justice considering retirement to do so “now or within two or three weeks because we’ve got to get this done before the election.” November may seem far off, but confirmations take time and senators have vacations to plan and, for a third of them, campaigns to run. There really isn’t a very big window to get something of this magnitude accomplished before the electorate casts its votes.

A majority of the Senate has decided to fulfill its constitutional role of advice and consent by withholding support for the nomination during a presidential election year, with millions of votes having been cast in highly charged contests…. The American people shouldn’t be denied a voice.

That was Grassley back in 2016 when it behooved his twisted farce of a judicial philosophy to kneecap an entire Supreme Court Term to keep a black man from fulfilling the Constitutional duty he’d been elected to perform twice. This year isn’t a presidential election year, but the logic of Grassley’s prior statement still holds. He’s worried that, given a voice, the voters might strip him of his majority. And unlike 2016 Grassley, 2018 Grassley desperately wants to deny the American people a voice.

In reality, 2016 Grassley was just an inveterate liar. The American people had already voted and they voted for Obama to select Supreme Court justices for four years, not three. Grassley knew this, of course, but made up some pig slop about elections to cover his participation in a shocking assault on the institution of American government. At least 2018 Grassley is honest.

But he could have just said, “Because of recesses and the always-busy schedules of the Senate, it’s much better if a justice retires now, giving us enough time to replace that seat without disrupting the Court’s schedule.” That’s also a load, but at least it doesn’t require explicitly obliterating the lie you staked your reputation on two years earlier. Earlier today, Grassley doubled down saying that he would see no problem confirming a justice in the presidential election year of 2020. That’s… bold.

And yet Grassley isn’t alone in his ongoing struggle with basic intellectual consistency. In 2011, Michael Brennan wrote an op-ed passionately defending the importance of the blue slip process in selecting a judge to fill the Seventh Circuit vacated by Terence Evans. Yesterday, Brennan was confirmed to that exact seat despite Senator Tammy Baldwin’s blue slip protest. Presumably he got over his deeply held principles just in time. As have the legions of conservative lawmakers who ranted up and down about the importance of respecting the state’s electorate in selecting judges until they decided states’ rights aren’t really convenient.

How does one live with themselves in the face of this kind of hypocrisy? Because it’s not so much that these people can be called hypocrites, it’s that they go out of their way to celebrate their hypocrisy. Grassley could have made another convoluted excuse. The Republicans could have nominated almost any lawyer but Brennan to that seat. But these folks seem pathologically compelled to show the world that they don’t stand by their principles. How broken must a person’s moral compass be to live like that? To know that your word is empty.

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The shame would crush most people.

Key senator urges any wavering U.S. high court justice to retire now [Reuters]

HeadshotJoe Patrice is an editor at Above the Law and co-host of Thinking Like A Lawyer. Feel free to email any tips, questions, or comments. Follow him on Twitter if you’re interested in law, politics, and a healthy dose of college sports news.

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